Seneca the Younger Quotes
-
I have withdrawn not only from men, but from affairs, especially my own affairs; I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may be of assistance to them.
-
Persistent kindness conquers the ill-disposed.
-
The man who thinks only of his own generation is born for few.
-
It is safer to offend certain men than it is to oblige them; for as proof that they owe nothing they seek recourse in hatred.
-
The condition of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labor at preoccupations that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world-loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.
-
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.
-
There in no one more unfortunate than the man who has never been unfortunate. For it has never been in his power to try himself.
-
The greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution.
-
It goes far toward making a man faithful to let him understand that you think him so; and he that does but suspect I will deceive him, gives me a sort of right to do so.
-
As for old age, embrace and love it. It abounds with pleasure if you know how to use it. The gradually declining years are among the sweetest in a man's life, and I maintain that, even when they have reached the extreme limit, they have their pleasure still.
-
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
-
The abundance of books is distraction
-
Whom the dawn sees proud, evening sees prostrate.
-
To forgive all is as inhuman as to forgive none
-
Happy he whoe'er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with unambitious oar keeps close to the land.
-
One must take all one's life to learn how to leave, and what will perhaps make you wonder more, one must take all one's life to learn how to die.
-
There is nothing more miserable and foolish than anticipation.
-
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.
-
They who have light in themselves will not revolve as satellites.
-
No book can be so good, as to be profitable when negligently read.