Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Hardly a man will you find who could live with his door open.
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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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The part of life which we really live is short.
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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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Know thyself; this is the great object.
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Who-only let him be a man and intent upon honor-is not eager for the honorable ordeal and prompt to assume perilous duties? To what energetic man is not idleness a punishment?
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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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He grieves more than is necessary who grieves before any cause for sorrow has arisen.
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Nullum ad nocendum tempus angustum est malis. No time is too short for the wicked to injure their neighbors.
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A crowd of fellow-sufferers is a miserable kind of comfort.
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Life without literary studies is death.
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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.
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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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Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.
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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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We deliberate about the parcels of life, but not about life itself, and so we arrive all unawares at its different epochs, and have the trouble of beginning all again. And so finally it is that we do not walk as men confidently towards death, but let death come suddenly upon us.
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Life is divided into three periods: that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these the present is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain.
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It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
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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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Dead, we become the lumber of the world, And to that mass of matter shall be swept Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
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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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There is nothing wrong with changing a plan when the situation has changed.
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To rule yourself is the ultimate power