Seneca the Younger Quotes
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What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.
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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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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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When once ambition has passed its natural limits, its progress is boundless.
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The most happy ought to wish for death.
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Go on and increase in valor, O boy! this is the path to immortality.
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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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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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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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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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Life without literary studies is death.
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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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He grieves more than is necessary who grieves before any cause for sorrow has arisen.
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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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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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It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
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The hour which gives us life begins to take it away.
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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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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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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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We are at best but stewards of what we falsely call our own; yet avarice is so insatiable that it is not in the power of liberality to content it.
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It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.
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There is nothing wrong with changing a plan when the situation has changed.