Seneca the Younger Quotes
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The ascent from earth to heaven is not easy.
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Remember, not one penny can we take with us into the unknown land.
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Be not dazzled by beauty, but look for those inward qualities which are lasting.
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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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The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.
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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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There is the need for someone against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler, you won't make the crooked straight.
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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 constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.
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The greatest power of ruling consists in the exercise of self-control.
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You are your choices.
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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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Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.
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Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors.
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Tranqility is a certain quality of mind, which no condition or fortune can either exalt or depress.
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If you don't know, ask. You will be a fool for the moment, but a wise man for the rest of your life.
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The great pilot can sail even when his canvass is rent.
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I am ashamed of my master and not of my servitude.
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The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing.
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Let him that hath done the good office conceal it; let him that received it disclose it.
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Resistance to oppression is second nature.
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Human nature is so constituted that insults sink deeper than kindnesses; the remembrance of the latter soon passes away, while that of the former is treasured in the memory.
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Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain.
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Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy.