Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Nature ever provides for her own exigencies.
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Not a soul takes thought how well he may live- only how long: yet a good life might be everybody's, a long one can be nobody's.
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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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The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.
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That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.
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A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it. But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness.
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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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A favor is to a grateful man delightful always; to an ungrateful man only once.
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The things which we hold in our hands, which we see with our eyes, and which our avarice hugs, are transitory, they may be taken from us by ill luck or by violence; but a kindness lasts even after the loss of that by means of which it was bestowed; for it is a good deed, which no violence can undo.
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It is by the benefit of letters that absent friends are in a manner brought together.
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Lay hold of today's task, and you will not depend so much upon tomorrow's.
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Ignorance is the cause of fear.
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The shortest road to wealth lies in the contempt of wealth.
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The expression of truth is simplicity.
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Men trust their eyes rather than their ears; the road by precept is long and tedious, by example short and effectual.
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The place one's in, though, doesn't make any contribution to peace of mind: it's the spirit that makes everything agreeable to oneself.
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Every one has time if he likes. Business runs after nobody: people cling to it of their own free will and think that to be busy is a proof of happiness.
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What a vile and abject thing is man if he do not raise himself above humanity.
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A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
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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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Do what you should, not what you may.
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There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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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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Great men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.