Seneca the Younger Quotes
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The wise man will always reflect concerning the quality not the quantity of life.
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So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.
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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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How great would be our peril if our slaves began to number us!
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There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
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The young man must store up, the old man must use.
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It is a world of mischief that may be done by a single example of avarice or luxury. One voluptuous palate makes many more.
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There are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery.
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Not he who has little, but he whose wishes more, is poor.
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Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.
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Everyone rushes his life on, and suffers from a yearning for the future and a boredom with the present. But that man who devotes every hour to his own needs, who plans every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears tomorrow.
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Money does all things for reward. Some are pious and honest as long as they thrive upon it, but if the devil himself gives better wages, they soon change their party.
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Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.
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Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.
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We should have a bond of sympathy for all sentient beings, knowing that only the depraved and base take pleasure in the sight of blood and suffering.
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Self-denial is the best riches.
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Whatever has overstepped its due bounds is always in a state of instability.
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There is no genius free from some tincture of madness
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It's all in your head: you have the power to make things seem hard or easy or even amusing. The choice is yours.
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God never repents of what He has first resolved upon.
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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 greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution; who resists to sorest temptation from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menaces and frowns; whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God is most unfaltering.
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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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To meditate an injury is to commit one.