Seneca the Younger Quotes
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We must take care to live not merely a long life, but a full one; for living a long life requires only good fortune, but living a full life requires character. Long is the life that is fully lived; it is fulfilled only when the mind supplies its own good qualities and empowers itself from within.
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Fortune can take away riches, but not courage.
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It passes in the world for greatness of mind, to be perpetually giving and loading people with bounties; but it is one thing to know how to give and another thing not to know how to keep. Give me a heart that is easy and open, but I will have no holes in it; let it be bountiful with judgment, but I will have nothing run out of it I know not how.
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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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There is nothing which persevering effort and unceasing and diligent care cannot accomplish.
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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
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It is not poverty that we praise, it is the man whom poverty cannot humble or bend.
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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.
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He is most powerful who governs himself.
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Our plans miscarry because they have no aim.
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Do you desire not to be angry? Be not inquisitive. He who inquires what is said of him only works out his own misery.
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Let us fight the battle-retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.
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It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.
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You talk one way, you live another.
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Cato, being scurrilously treated by a low and vicious fellow, quietly said to him, "A contest between us is very unequal, for thou canst bear ill language with ease, and return it with pleasure; but to me it is unusual to hear, and disagreeable to speak it." There are none more abusive to others than they that lie most open to it themselves; but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me today will have somebody to laugh at him tomorrow.
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Virtue with some is nothing but successful temerity.
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Let the man, who would be grateful, think of repaying a kindness, even while receiving it.
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Some pretend want of power to make a competent return; and you shall find in others a kind of graceless modesty, that makes a man ashamed of requiting an obligation, because it is a confession that he has received one.
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What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
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When modesty has once perished, it will never revive.
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Nobody will keep the thing he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more.
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To things which you bear with impatience you should accustom yourself, and, by habit you will bear them well.
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Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart.
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Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.