Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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He is most powerful who governs himself.
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We are all sinful. Therefore whatever we blame in another we shall find in our own bosoms.
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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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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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The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations.
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Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it.
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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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Such is the blindness, nay the insanity of mankind, that some men are driven to death by the fear of it.
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Virtue with some is nothing but successful temerity.
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A good mind is a lord of a kingdom.
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Voyage, travel, and change of place impart vigor
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Nature has given us the seeds of knowledge, not knowledge itself.
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Before old age I took care to live well; in old age I take care to die well; but to die well is to die willingly.
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The man who does something under orders is not unhappy; he is unhappy who does something against his will.
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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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It is sweet to mingle tears with tears; Griefs, where they wound in solitude, Wound more deeply.
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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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Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition.
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Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness. The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort. To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.
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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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The arts are the servant; wisdom its master.
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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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Good sides to adversity are best admired at a distance.