Seneca the Younger Quotes
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...the geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough....You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life?
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It is safer to offend certain men than it is to oblige them; for as proof that they owe nothing they seek recourse in hatred.
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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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Refrain from following the example of those whose craving is for attention, not their own improvement.
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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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Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
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The physician cannot prescribe by letter, he must feel the pulse.
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The most happy ought to wish for death.
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Epileptics know by signs when attacks are imminent and take precautions accordingly; we must do the same in regard to anger
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No one can keep a mask on long.
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Light is that grief which counsel can allay.
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He will live ill who does not know how to die well.
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Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
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No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character.
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Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so shall I choose my death when I am about to depart from life.
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Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.
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Real improvement is of slow growth only.
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Whoever has nothing to hope, let him despair of nothing.
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Hardly a man will you find who could live with his door open.
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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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It is one thing to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to the memory. But to know is to make each thing one's own, not depend on the text and always to look back to the teacher. "Zeno said this, Cleanthes said this." Let there be space between you and the book.
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I was not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.
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Go on and increase in valor, O boy! this is the path to immortality.