Seneca the Younger Quotes
-
For what else is Nature but God and the Divine Reason that pervades the whole universe and all its parts.
-
Go on and increase in valor, O boy! this is the path to immortality.
-
It is never too late to turn from the errors of our ways: He who repents of his sins is almost innocent.
-
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.
-
Nullum ad nocendum tempus angustum est malis. No time is too short for the wicked to injure their neighbors.
-
It’s in the very trickery that it pleases me. But show me how the trick is done, and I have lost my interest therein.
-
The great pilot can sail even when his canvass is rent.
-
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.
-
I was not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.
-
The part of life which we really live is short.
-
If I only have the will to be grateful, I am so.
-
Hardly a man will you find who could live with his door open.
-
A crowd of fellow-sufferers is a miserable kind of comfort.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain.
-
There is nothing wrong with changing a plan when the situation has changed.
-
It is only the surprise and newness of the thing which makes that misfortune terrible which by premeditation might be made easy to us. For that which some people make light by sufferance, others do by foresight.
-
You should rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile duties who wish to have daily as their closest friends Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be too busy to see you, none of these will not send his visitor away happier and more devoted to himself, none of these will allow anyone to depart empty-handed. They are at home to all mortals by night and by day.
-
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.
-
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?
-
The ascent from earth to heaven is not easy.
-
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.
-
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.