Seneca the Younger Quotes
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It does not matter how many books you have, but how good the books are which you have.
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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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It is not goodness to be better than the worst.
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How much does great prosperity overspread the mind with darkness.
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Death takes us piecemeal, not at a gulp.
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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 worse a person is the less he feels it.
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Our words should aim not to please, but to help.
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Life, if thou knowest how to use it, is long enough.
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How can a thing possibly govern others when it cannot be governed itself?
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There is nothing that we can properly call our own but our time, and yet everybody fools us out of it who has a mind to do it. If a man borrows a paltry sum of money, there must needs be bonds and securities, and every common civility is presently charged upon account. But he who has my time thinks he owes me nothing for it, though it be a debt that gratitude itself can never repay.
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Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall always pray for leisure.
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Everything in art is but a copy of nature.
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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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Life is short and art is long.
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The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself.
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What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
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The Germans, a race eager for war.
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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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That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.
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What does reason demand of a man? A very easy thing-to live in accord with his own nature.
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Eyes will not see when the heart wishes them to be blind.
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Ignorance is the cause of fear.
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Look at the stars lighting up the sky: no one of them stays in the same place.