Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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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 are many things akin to highest deity that are still obscure. Some may be too subtle for our powers of comprehension, others imperceptible to us because such exalted majesty conceals itself in the holiest part of its sanctuary, forbidding access to any power save that of the spirit. How many heavenly bodies revolve unseen by human eye!
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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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Vice may be learnt, even without a teacher
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When one is friend on himself, also is friend of everybody.
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Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
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Unblest is he who thinks himself unblest.
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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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Be not dazzled by beauty, but look for those inward qualities which are lasting.
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No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.
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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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If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
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It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.
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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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You are your choices.
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Prosperity asks for fidelity; adversity exacts it.
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Know thyself; this is the great object.
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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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The intellect must not be kept at consistent tension, but diverted by pastimes.... The mind must have relaxation, and will rise stronger and keener after recreation.
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These individulas have riches just as we say that we 'have a fever,' when really the fever has us.
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It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.
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Money has never yet made anyone rich.
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To rule yourself is the ultimate power