Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Life is a gift of the immortal Gods, but living well is the gift of philosophy.
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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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Praise thyself never.
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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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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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Philosophy's power to blunt all the blows of circumstance is beyond belief.
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The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.
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It is by the benefit of letters that absent friends are in a manner brought together.
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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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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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While we wait for life, life passes
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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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Lay hold of today's task, and you will not depend so much upon tomorrow's.
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That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.
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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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What a vile and abject thing is man if he do not raise himself above humanity.
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Great men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
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Do what you should, not what you may.
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Who shrinks from knowledge of his calamities but aggravates his fear; troubles half seen, shall torture all the more.
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The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself.
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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 shortest road to wealth lies in the contempt of wealth.
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Ignorance is the cause of fear.