Seneca the Younger Quotes
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A dwarf can stand on a mountain, he's no taller.
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A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his position, which after all is only something we wear like clothing.
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Expediency often silences justice.
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Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness it is to be expecting evil before it comes.
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The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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To the stars through difficulties.
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Although a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin.
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I do not sacrifice, but lend myself to business.
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He who forbids not sin when he may, commands it
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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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The mind should be allowed some relaxation, that it may return to its work all the better for the rest.
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No book can be so good, as to be profitable when negligently read.
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If we desire to judge justly, we must persuade ourselves that none of us is without sin.
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I have withdrawn not only from men, but from affairs, especially my own affairs; I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may be of assistance to them.
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No man is born wise; but wisdom and virtue require a tutor; though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master.
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It is easy enough to arouse in a listener a desire for what is honorable; for in every one of us nature has laid the foundations or sown the seeds of the virtues. We are born to them all, all of us, and when a person comes along with the necessary stimulus, then those qualities of the personality are awakened, so to speak, from their slumber.
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That which we are not permitted to have we delight in; that which we can have is disregarded.
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Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honourable.
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Whom the dawn sees proud, evening sees prostrate.
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The whole discord of this world consists in discords.
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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.
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The mind does not easily unlearn what it has been long in learning.
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A hated government does not long survive.
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An action will not be right unless the will be right; for from thence is the action derived. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind be right; for from thence comes the will.