Seneca the Younger Quotes
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We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.
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If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.
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What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then.
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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.
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It is the practice of the multitude to bark at eminent men, as little dogs do at strangers.
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You cannot, I repeat, successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time.
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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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The man who while he gives thinks of what he will get in return, deserves to be deceived.
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The mind does not easily unlearn what it has been long in learning.
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Nemo tam divos habuit faventes, Crastinum ut possit sibi polliceri. Nobody has ever found the gods so much his friends that he can promise himself another day.
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Economy is in itself a great source of revenue.
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He that lays down precepts for the governing of our lives, and moderating our passions, obliges humanity not only in the present, but in all future generations.
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Drunkenness is nothing but a self-induced state of insanity.
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Whom they have injured they also hate.
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So enjoy the pleasures of the hour as not to spoil those that are to follow.
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If wisdom were offered me with the proviso that I should keep it shut up and refrain from declaring it, I should refuse. There's no delight in owning anything unshared.
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The best way to do good to ourselves is to do it to others; the right way to gather is to scatter.
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The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires.
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The first petition that we are to make to Almighty God is for a good conscience, the next for health of mind, and then of body.
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The whole discord of this world consists in discords.
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Never to wrong others takes one a long way towards peace of mind.
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How much longer are you going to be a pupil? From now on do some teaching as well.
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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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It is equally a fault to believe all men or to believe none.