Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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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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War I abhor, and yet how sweet The sound along the marching street Of drum and fife, and I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul.
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The deep waters of time will flow over us: only a few men of genius will lift a head above the surface, and though doomed eventually to pass into the same silence, will fight against oblivion and for a long time hold their own.
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Some lack the fickleness to live as they wish and just live as they have begun.
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Life's neither a good nor an evil: it's a field for good and evil.
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Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature.
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Life without the courage to die is slavery.
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It is the fault of youth that it cannot restrain its own impetuosity.
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What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend. That is progress indeed
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Prudence will punish to prevent crime, not to avenge it.
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Nature ever provides for her own exigencies.
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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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I was shipwrecked before I got aboard.
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Look at the stars lighting up the sky: no one of them stays in the same place.
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A favor is to a grateful man delightful always; to an ungrateful man only once.
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Where silence is not allowed, what then is permissible?
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The expression of truth is simplicity.
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Many shed tears merely for show, and have dry eyes when no one's around to observe them.
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True friends are the whole world to one another; and he that is a friend to himself is also a friend to mankind. Even in my studies the greatest delight I take is of imparting it to others; for there is no relish to me in the possessing of anything without a partner.
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The real compensation of a right action is inherent in having performed it.
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Success gives the character of honesty to some classes of wickedness.
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A good mind possesses a kingdom.
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Luck is preparation multiplied by opportunity.