Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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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.
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It is never too late to learn what is always necessary to know.
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To meditate an injury is to commit one.
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You cannot escape necessities, but you can overcome them.
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I am telling you to be a slow-speaking person.
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The key to getting everything you want is to never put all your begs in one ask-it!
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If true, the Pythagorean principles as to abstain from flesh, foster innocence; if ill-founded they at least teach us frugality, and what loss have you in losing your cruelty? It merely deprives you of the food of lions and vultures...let us ask what is best - not what is customary. Let us love temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed.
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The way to wickedness is always through wickedness.
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Virtue is that perfect good, which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.
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If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not communicate it, I would refuse the gift.
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All we see and admire today will burn in the universal fire that ushers in a new, just, happy world.
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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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The whole duty of man is embraced in the two principles of abstinence and patience: temperance in prosperity, and patient courage in adversity.
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Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it.
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No man finds it difficult to return to nature except the man who has deserted nature.
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People do not die - they kill themselves.
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Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
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We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?
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Fire proves gold, adversity proves men.
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Self-denial is the best riches.
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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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Sovereignty over any foreign land is insecure.
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The law of the pleasure in having done anything for another is, that the one almost immediately forgets having given, and the other remembers eternally having received.