Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Lack of desire is the greatest riches.
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Unjust rule does not last forever.
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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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Man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy-that he live in accordance with his own nature.
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This is the reason we cannot complain of life: it keeps no one against his will.
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It is the mind that makes us rich and happy, in what condition soever we are, and money signifies no more to it than it does to the gods.
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Man is a reasoning Animal.
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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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We are sure to get the better of fortune if we do but grapple with her.
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Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.
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You find in some a sort of graceless modesty, that makes them ashamed to requite an obligation.
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The man who can be compelled knows not how to die.
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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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Death: There's nothing bad about it at all except the thing that comes before it-the fear of it.
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You can only acquire it successfully if you cease to feel any sense of shame.
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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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No man ever became wise by chance.
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What with our hooks, snares, nets, and dogs, we are at war with all living creatures, and nothing comes amiss but that which is either too cheap or too common; and all this is to gratify a fantastical palate.
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The best cure for anger is delay.
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The entire world would perish, if pity were not to limit anger.
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We are as answerable for what we give as for what we receive; nay, the misplacing of a benefit is worse than the not receiving of it; for the one is another person's fault, but the other is mine.
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Where silence is not allowed, what then is permissible?
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Auditur et altera pars. (The other side shall be heard as well.)
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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.