Seneca the Younger Quotes
-
Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.
-
There are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery.
-
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.
-
Nothing is so false as human life, nothing so treacherous. God knows no one would have accepted it as a gift, if it had not been given without our knowledge.
-
My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application-not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech-and learn them so well that words become works.
-
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.
-
To meditate an injury is to commit one.
-
There is no genius free from some tincture of madness
-
Philosophy takes as her aim the state of happiness...she shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. She strips men's minds of empty thinking, bestows a greatness that is solid and administers a check to greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show; she sees that we are left no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated.
-
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.
-
The state of that man's mind who feels too intense an interest as to future events, must be most deplorable.
-
The largest part of goodness is the will to become good.
-
He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former.
-
No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another, if thou wishest to live for thyself.
-
No one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and that the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life, although even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. Yet this conviction, clear as it is, needs to be strengthened and given deeper roots through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not a important as keeping the resolutions you have made already.
-
The swiftness of time is infinite, as is still more evident when we look back on the past.
-
The road by precepts is tedious, by example, short and efficacious.
-
It is the practice of the multitude to bark at eminent men, as little dogs do at strangers.
-
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.
-
God has not revealed all things to man and has entrusted us with but a fragment of His mighty work. But He who directs all things, who has established and laid the foundation of the world, who has clothed Himself with Creation, He is greater and better than that which He has wrought. Hidden from our eyes, He can only be reached by the spirit.
-
Self-denial is the best riches.
-
Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart.
-
Economy is in itself a great source of revenue.
-
A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.