Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action. If this be true, not only do the doctrines of wisdom help us but the precepts also, which check and banish our emotions by a sort of official decree.
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To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.
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A well-governed appetite is a great part of liberty
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Revenge is an inhuman word.
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Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure, if you know how to use it. The best morsel is reserved for last.
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There are more people abusive to others than lie open to abuse 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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It is the property of a great and good mind to covet, not the fruit of good deeds, but good deeds themselves, and to seek for a good man even after having met with bad men.
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Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers.
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It is not how many books thou hast, but how good; careful reading profiteth, while that which is full of variety delighteth.
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But when you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.
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Just where death is expecting you is something we cannot know; so, for your part, expect him everywhere.
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If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you're needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.
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Tis a human trait to hate one you have wronged
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The evil which assails us is not in the localities we inhabit but in ourselves. We lack strength to endure the least task, being incapable of suffering pain, powerless to enjoy pleasure, impatient with everything. How many invoke death when, after having tried every sort of change, they find themselves reverting to the same sensations, unable to discover any new experience.
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This is the reason we cannot complain of life: it keeps no one against his will.
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A young man respects and looks up to his teachers.
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It is within the power of every man to live his life nobly, but of no man to live forever. Yet so many of us hope that life will go on forever, and so few aspire to live nobly.
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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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There in no one more unfortunate than the man who has never been unfortunate. For it has never been in his power to try himself.
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Death is a release from and an end of all pains.
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We are born subjects, and to obey God is perfect liberty. He that does this shall be free, safe and happy.
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Fire tries gold, misery tries brave men.
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No one can keep a mask on long.