Seneca the Younger Quotes
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You cannot, I repeat, successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time.
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Live for thy neighbor if thou wouldst live for thyself.
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An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them.
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It is remarkable that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron, gold, and silver, being both the instruments of blood and slaughter and the price of it, nature has hidden in the bowels of the earth.
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Remove severe restraint and what will become of virtue?
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The Fates guide those who go willingly. Those who do not, they drag.
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I have withdrawn not only from men, but from affairs, especially my own affairs; I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may be of assistance to them.
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The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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An unpopular rule is never long maintained.
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A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his position, which after all is only something we wear like clothing.
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The gladiator is formulating his plan in the arena or essentially Too late.
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The sun shines even on the wicked.
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The whole duty of man is embraced in the two principles of abstinence and patience: temperance in prosperity, and patient courage in adversity.
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The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires.
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The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations.
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If sensuality were happiness, beasts were happier than men; but human felicity is lodged in the soul, not in the flesh.
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He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.
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He who comes to a conclusion when the other side is unheard, may have been just in his conclusion, but yet has not been just in his conduct.
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Not he who has little, but he whose wishes more, is poor.
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The proper amount of wealth is that which neither descends to poverty nor is far distant from it.
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On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.
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Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it.
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The declaration of love may come sooner than expected. Take time before you reciprocate as this may simply be a statement of what they expect from you.
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Whatever we owe, it is our part to find where to pay it, and to do it without asking, too; for whether the creditor be good or bad, the debt is still the same.