Seneca the Younger Quotes
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While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned.
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Nothing is more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to show to prove that he has lived long, except his years.
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I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes. ... Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body.
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The book-keeping of benefits is simple: it is all expenditure; if any one returns it, that is clear gain; if he does not return it, it is not lost, I gave it for the sake of giving.
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When once ambition has passed its natural limits, its progress is boundless.
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No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character.
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Go on and increase in valor, O boy! this is the path to immortality.
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Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.
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Light cares speak, great ones are speechless.
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When thou hast profited so much that thou respectest even thyself, thou mayst let go thy tutor.
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Life without literary studies is death.
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To be feared is to fear. No one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind.
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No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.
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The stomach begs and clamors, and listens to no precepts. And yet it is not an obdurate creditor; for it is dismissed with small payment if you give it only what you owe, and not as much as you can.
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The hour which gives us life begins to take it away.
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He grieves more than is necessary who grieves before any cause for sorrow has arisen.
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The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow; and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched.
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Successful crime is dignified with the name of virtue; the good become the slaves of the wicked; might makes right; fear silences the power of the law.
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Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things-eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies-since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.
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True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model.
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It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
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You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.
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Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
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A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many.