Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.
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It's unknown the place and uncertain the time where death awaits you; thus you must expect death to find you, every time, at every place.
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It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.
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It is sometimes pleasant even to act like a madman.
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How great would be our peril if our slaves began to number us!
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Hesitation is the best cure for anger. The first blows of anger are heavy, but if it waits, it will think again.
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Do not grudge your brother his rest. He has at last become free, safe and immortal, and ranges joyous through the boundless heavens; he has left this low-lying region and has soared upwards to that place which receives in its happy bosom the souls set free from the chains of matter. Your brother has not lost the light of day, but has obtained a more enduring light. He has not left us, but has gone on before.
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What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend. That is progress indeed
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Retire into yourself as much as possible. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one. People learn as they teach.
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Those whom fortune has never favored are more joyful than those whom she has deserted.
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Only a great man, believe me, and one whose excellence rises far above human failings, will not allow anything to be stolen from his own span of time, and his life is very long precisely because he has devoted to himself entirely any time that became available. None of it lay uncultivated and idle, none was under another man's control, for guarding it most jealously, he found nothing worth exchanging for his own precious time.
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The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires.
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A man's ability cannot possibly be of one sort and his soul of another. If his soul be well-ordered, serious and restrained, his ability also is sound and sober. Conversely, when the one degenerates, the other is contaminated.
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The gladiator is formulating his plan in the arena or essentially Too late.
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Precepts are like seeds; they are little things which do much good; if the mind which receives them has a disposition, it must not be doubted that his part contributes to the generation, and adds much to that which has been collected.
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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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Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. . . . . . No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.
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Humanity is fortunate, because no man is unhappy except by his own fault.
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Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all. . . . .
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Human society is like an arch, kept from falling by the mutual pressure of its parts
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It is equally a fault to believe all men or to believe none.
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So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.
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Not he who has little, but he whose wishes more, is poor.
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There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.