Seneca the Younger Quotes
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To the stars through difficulties.
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A king is he who has laid fear aside and the base longings of an evil heart; whom ambition unrestrained and the fickle favor of the reckless mob move not.
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He worships God who knows him.
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Why do people not confess vices? It is because they have not yet laid them aside. It is a waking person only who can tell their dreams.
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On entering a temple we assume all signs of reverence. How much more reverent then should we be before the heavenly bodies, the stars, the very nature of God!
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In every good man a God doth dwell.
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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
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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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People do not die - they kill themselves.
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You cannot escape necessities, but you can overcome them.
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No possession is gratifying without a companion.
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Revenge is an inhuman word.
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Whom they have injured they also hate.
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A man can refrain from wanting what he has not and cheerfully make the best of a bird in the hand.
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Vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together.
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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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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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There is no fair wind for one who knows not whither he is bound.
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So enjoy the pleasures of the hour as not to spoil those that are to follow.
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He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone.
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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.
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They who have light in themselves will not revolve as satellites.
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Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find.
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Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness. The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort. To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.