Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Great men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
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The entire world would perish, if pity were not to limit anger.
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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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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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Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature.
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He is not guilty who is not guilty of his own free will.
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It passes in the world for greatness of mind, to be perpetually giving and loading people with bounties; but it is one thing to know how to give and another thing not to know how to keep. Give me a heart that is easy and open, but I will have no holes in it; let it be bountiful with judgment, but I will have nothing run out of it I know not how.
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One who's our friend is fond of us; one who's fond of us isn't necessarily our friend.
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The most onerous slavery is to be a slave to oneself.
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It is the fault of youth that it cannot restrain its own impetuosity.
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Luck is preparation multiplied by opportunity.
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Speech devoted to truth should be straightforward and plain
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Plato once wanted to punish one of his slaves and asked his nephew to do the actual whipping for he himself did not own his anger.
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The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself.
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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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That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.
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The man who can be compelled knows not how to die.
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It is a proof of nobility of mind to despise injuries.
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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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What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend. That is progress indeed
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What madness it is for a man to starve himself to enrich his heir, and so turn a friend into an enemy! For his joy at your death will be proportioned to what you leave him.
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What else is nature but God?
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A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
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Success gives the character of honesty to some classes of wickedness.