Seneca the Younger Quotes
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No one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and that the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life, although even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. Yet this conviction, clear as it is, needs to be strengthened and given deeper roots through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not a important as keeping the resolutions you have made already.
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I do not sacrifice, but lend myself to business.
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While we wait for life, life passes
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Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature.
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I know that nothing comes to pass but what God appoints; our fate is decreed, and things do not happen by chance, but every man's portion of joy and sorrow is predetermined.
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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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Reason wishes that the judgement it gives be just; anger wishes that the judgement it has given seem to be just.
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No man ever became wise by chance.
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Religion worships God, while superstition profanes that worship.
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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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Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it.
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If you don't know, ask. You will be a fool for the moment, but a wise man for the rest of your life.
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Praise thyself never.
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Speech devoted to truth should be straightforward and plain
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He who fears from near at hand often fears less.
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Dignity increases more easily than it begins.
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Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness it is to be expecting evil before it comes.
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Epicurus says that you should rather have regard to the company with whom you eat and drink, than to what you eat and drink.
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The mind, unless it is pure and holy, cannot see God.
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Man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy-that he live in accordance with his own nature.
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Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.
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Choose as a guide one whom you will admire more when you see him act than when you hear him speak.
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To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.
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Life is short and art is long.