Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Who is everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
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There exists no more difficult art than living.
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Life is most delightful on the downward slope.
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God has given some gifts to the whole human race, from which no one is excluded.
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It is remarkable that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron, gold, and silver, being both the instruments of blood and slaughter and the price of it, nature has hidden in the bowels of the earth.
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Good sides to adversity are best admired at a distance.
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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.
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Some there are that torment themselves afresh with the memory of what is past; others, again, afflict themselves with the apprehension of evils to come; and very ridiculously both - for the one does not now concern us, and the other not yet ... One should count each day as a separate life.
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A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.
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So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.
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Just as so many rivers, so many showers of rain from above, so many medicinal springs do not alter the taste of the sea, so the pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man. For it maintains its balance, and over all that happens it throws its own complexion, because it is more powerful than external circumstances.
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The fortune of war is always doubtful.
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A great step toward independence is a good-humoured stomach.
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So enjoy the pleasures of the hour as not to spoil those that are to follow.
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We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life.
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The highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom - that deed and word should be in accord.
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A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
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Although a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin.
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We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. We must learn to control and focus the force of our imagination on the good, bright side so it is positive and constructive helping ourselves and others, rather than let its force focus on the bad, dark side so it is negative and destructive hurting ourselves and others!
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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.
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God has not revealed all things to man and has entrusted us with but a fragment of His mighty work. But He who directs all things, who has established and laid the foundation of the world, who has clothed Himself with Creation, He is greater and better than that which He has wrought. Hidden from our eyes, He can only be reached by the spirit.
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Calamity is virtue's opportunity.
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It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen that is the common right of humanity.
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Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness.