Seneca the Younger Quotes
-
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.
-
True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model.
-
It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.
-
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!
-
If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
-
The greatest power of ruling consists in the exercise of self-control.
-
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.
-
No one can keep a mask on long.
-
Be not dazzled by beauty, but look for those inward qualities which are lasting.
-
The great pilot can sail even when his canvass is rent.
-
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.
-
Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.
-
There is the need for someone against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler, you won't make the crooked straight.
-
Tranqility is a certain quality of mind, which no condition or fortune can either exalt or depress.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Remember, not one penny can we take with us into the unknown land.
-
You are your choices.
-
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.
-
Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain.
-
I am ashamed of my master and not of my servitude.
-
He that by harshness of nature rules his family with an iron hand is as truly a tyrant as he who misgoverns a nation.
-
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.
-
Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.