Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Levity of behavior is the bane of all that is good and virtuous.
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We are wrong in looking forward to death: in great measure it's past already.
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Refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear.
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Small sorrows speak great ones are silent.
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A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation...you have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it.
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It's not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
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Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.
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...the geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough....You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life?
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Don't stumble over something behind you.
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Of all the felicities, the most charming is that of a firm and gentle friendship. It sweetens all our cares, dispels our sorrows, and counsels us in all extremities. Nay, if there were no other comfort in it than the pare exercise of so generous a virtue, even for that single reason a man would not be without it; it is a sovereign antidote against all calamities - even against the fear of death itself.
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When you see a man in distress, recognize him as a fellow man.
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Golden roofs break men's rest.
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He will live ill who does not know how to die well.
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As long as you live, learn how to live.
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Nothing is more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to show to prove that he has lived long, except his years.
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Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things-eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies-since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.
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What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.
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Nothing costs so much as what is bought by prayers.
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Real improvement is of slow growth only.
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In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.
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Epileptics know by signs when attacks are imminent and take precautions accordingly; we must do the same in regard to anger
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Misfortune is the test of a person's merit.
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No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character.
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Refrain from following the example of those whose craving is for attention, not their own improvement.