Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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The most onerous slavery is to be a slave to oneself.
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The bounty of nature is too little for the greedy person.
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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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He who receives a benefit with gratitude, repays the first installment of it.
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That moderation which nature prescribes, which limits our desires by resources restricted to our needs, has abandoned the field; it has now come to this -- that to want only what is enough is a sign both of boorishness and of utter destitution.
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The real compensation of a right action is inherent in having performed it.
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A well-governed appetite is a great part of liberty
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There are more people abusive to others than lie open to abuse themselves; but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me today will have somebody to laugh at him tomorrow.
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The foremost art of Kings is the power to endure hatred.
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How much does great prosperity overspread the mind with darkness.
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The best cure for anger is delay.
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Genius has never been accepted without a measure of condonement.
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The worse a person is the less he feels it.
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As the mother's womb holds us for ten months, making us ready, not for the womb itself, but for life, just so, through our lives, we are making ourselves ready for another birth...Therefore look forward without fear to that appointed hour- the last hour of the body, but not of the soul...That day, which you fear as being the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity.
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Speech is the mirror of the mind.
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Our words should aim not to please, but to help.
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Love of action is not industry.
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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 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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Look at the stars lighting up the sky: no one of them stays in the same place.
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What view is one likely to take of the state of a person's mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no constraint?
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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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Life is a gift of the immortal Gods, but living well is the gift of philosophy.