Seneca the Younger Quotes
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How much does great prosperity overspread the mind with darkness.
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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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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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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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Nature has made us passive, and to suffer is our lot. While we are in the flesh every man has his chain and his clog; only it is looser and lighter to one man than to another, and he is more at ease who takes it up and carries it than he who drags it.
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Love of action is not industry.
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Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.
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Truth never perishes.
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If you wish to be loved, love.
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The worse a person is the less he feels it.
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Genius has never been accepted without a measure of condonement.
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Nobody becomes guilty by fate.
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Our words should aim not to please, but to help.
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Whereas a prolonged life is not necessarily better, a prolonged death is necessarily worse.
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As was his language so was his life.
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Corporeal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
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The man who does something under orders is not unhappy; he is unhappy who does something against his will.
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Simple is the language of truth.
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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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You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.
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The articulate, trained voice is more distracting than mere noise.
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Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers.
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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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Eyes will not see when the heart wishes them to be blind.