Seneca the Younger Quotes
-
If we desire to judge justly, we must persuade ourselves that none of us is without sin.
-
We are born to lose and to perish, to hope and to fear, to vex ourselves and others; and there is no antidote against a common calamity but virtue; for the foundation of true joy is in the conscience.
-
Persistent kindness conquers the ill-disposed.
-
I am telling you to be a slow-speaking person.
-
It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.
-
It is a tedious thing to be always beginning life; they live badly who always begin to live.
-
Let us fight the battle-retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.
-
A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.
-
With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.
-
Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.
-
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.
-
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
-
If you wish another to keep your secret, first keep it to yourself.
-
The worst thing about getting old is evil men cease to fear you
-
It is never too late to learn what is always necessary to know.
-
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.
-
No man esteems anything that comes to him by chance; but when it is governed by reason, it brings credit both to the giver and receiver; whereas those favors are in some sort scandalous that make a man ashamed of his patron.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The fearful face usually betrays great guilt.
-
Everyone rushes his life on, and suffers from a yearning for the future and a boredom with the present. But that man who devotes every hour to his own needs, who plans every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears tomorrow.
-
I do not sacrifice, but lend myself to business.
-
The vices of idleness are only to be shaken off by active employment.
-
God never repents of what He has first resolved upon.