Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Men trust their eyes rather than their ears; the road by precept is long and tedious, by example short and effectual.
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There is this blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has exits innumerable, and as I choose the house in which I live, the ship in which I will sail, so will I choose the time and manner of my death.
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You cannot, I repeat, successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time.
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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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During difficult times and after mistakes and failures it is helpful to remember ... Oftentimes calamity turns to our advantage and great ruins make way for greater glories.
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Modesty once extinguished knows not how to return.
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We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.
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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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Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.
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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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We ought not to confine ourselves either to writing or to reading; the one, continuous writing, will cast a gloom over our strength, and exhaust it; the other will make our strength flabby and watery. It is better to have recourse to them alternately, and to blend one with the other, so that the fruits of one's reading may be reduced to concrete form by the pen.
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How great would be our peril if our slaves began to number us!
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A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it. But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness.
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Some cures are worse than the dangers they combat.
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Time discovers truth. Time heals what reason cannot.
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Every one has time if he likes. Business runs after nobody: people cling to it of their own free will and think that to be busy is a proof of happiness.
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There are no greater wretches in the world than many of those whom people in general take to be happy.
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Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots?
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The thing that matters is not what you bear, but how you bear it
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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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Prudence and love cannot be mixed; you can end love, but never moderate it.
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There is as much greatness of mind in the owning of a good turn as in the doing of it; and we must no more force a requital out of season than be wanting in it.
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On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.
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You cannot escape necessities, but you can overcome them.