Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.
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When modesty has once perished, it will never revive.
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There is nothing that Nature has made necessary which is more easy than death; we are longer a-coming into the world than going out of it; and there is not any minute of our lives wherein we may not reasonably expect it. Nay, it is but a momen'ts work, the parting of soul and body. What a shame is it then to stand in fear of anything so long that is over so soon!
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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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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.
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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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You cannot escape necessities, but you can overcome them.
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Whom the dawn sees proud, evening sees prostrate.
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Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.
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To meditate an injury is to commit one.
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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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The way to wickedness is always through wickedness.
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Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it.
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The foundation of the true joy is in the conscience.
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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.
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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.
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No man finds it difficult to return to nature except the man who has deserted nature.
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Whom they have injured they also hate.
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Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
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I am telling you to be a slow-speaking person.
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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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Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
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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.