Seneca the Younger Quotes
-
It is never too late to turn from the errors of our ways: He who repents of his sins is almost innocent.
-
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!
-
Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
-
Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.
-
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.
-
When one is friend on himself, also is friend of everybody.
-
Vice may be learnt, even without a teacher
-
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?
-
Be not dazzled by beauty, but look for those inward qualities which are lasting.
-
Nullum ad nocendum tempus angustum est malis. No time is too short for the wicked to injure their neighbors.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
He is greedy of life who is not willing to die when the world is perishing around him.
-
Let him that hath done the good office conceal it; let him that received it disclose it.
-
It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.
-
Unblest is he who thinks himself unblest.
-
To rule yourself is the ultimate power
-
In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.
-
Know thyself; this is the great object.
-
Remember, not one penny can we take with us into the unknown land.
-
Prosperity asks for fidelity; adversity exacts it.
-
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.
-
It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.