Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together.
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Fortune can take away riches, but not courage.
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He may as well not thank at all, who thanks when none are by.
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It is one thing to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to the memory. But to know is to make each thing one's own, not depend on the text and always to look back to the teacher. "Zeno said this, Cleanthes said this." Let there be space between you and the book.
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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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Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
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Let the man, who would be grateful, think of repaying a kindness, even while receiving it.
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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
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He is most powerful who governs himself.
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A good mind is a lord of a kingdom.
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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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Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man.
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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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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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They who have light in themselves will not revolve as satellites.
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It is sweet to mingle tears with tears; Griefs, where they wound in solitude, Wound more deeply.
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If true, the Pythagorean principles as to abstain from flesh, foster innocence; if ill-founded they at least teach us frugality, and what loss have you in losing your cruelty? It merely deprives you of the food of lions and vultures...let us ask what is best - not what is customary. Let us love temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed.
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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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A king is he who has laid fear aside and the base longings of an evil heart; whom ambition unrestrained and the fickle favor of the reckless mob move not.
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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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Drunkenness doesn't create vices, but it brings them to the fore.
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A favor is to a grateful man delightful always; to an ungrateful man only once.
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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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The man who thinks only of his own generation is born for few.