Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Four things does a reckless man gain who covets his neighbor's wife - demerit, an uncomfortable bed, thirdly, punishment, and lastly, hell.
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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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All we see and admire today will burn in the universal fire that ushers in a new, just, happy world.
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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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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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To wish to be well is a part of becoming well.
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Successful villany is called virtue.
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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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They who have light in themselves will not revolve as satellites.
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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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So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.
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He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone.
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He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former.
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God has not revealed all things to man and has entrusted us with but a fragment of His mighty work. But He who directs all things, who has established and laid the foundation of the world, who has clothed Himself with Creation, He is greater and better than that which He has wrought. Hidden from our eyes, He can only be reached by the spirit.
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We most often go astray on a well trodden and much frequented road.
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Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; 'tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick, renders us more hard to be cured.
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Let him who has granted a favour speak not of it; let him who has received one, proclaim it.
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It's the great soul that surrenders itself to fate, but a puny degenerate thing that struggles.
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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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Sovereignty over any foreign land is insecure.
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It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.
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I know that nothing comes to pass but what God appoints; our fate is decreed, and things do not happen by chance, but every man's portion of joy and sorrow is predetermined.
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Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.
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When modesty has once perished, it will never revive.