Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Pain, scorned by yonder gout-ridden wretch, endured by yonder dyspeptic in the midst of his dainties, borne bravely by the girl in travail. Slight thou art, if I can bear thee, short thou art if I cannot bear thee!
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The greatest power of ruling consists in the exercise of self-control.
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Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.
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Those whom true love has held, it will go on holding.
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There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.
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We have lost morals, justice, honor, piety and faith, and that sense of shame which, once lost, can never be restored.
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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.
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The most imperious masters over their own servants are at the same time the most abject slaves to the servants of others.
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No one loves his country for its size or eminence, but because it's his own.
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The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live.
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It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and - even more surprising - it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.
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It is only luxury and avarice that make poverty grievous to us; for it is a very small matter that does our business, and when we have provided against cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but vanity and excess.
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Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain.
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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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A thing seriously pursued affords true enjoyment.
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Abstinence is easier than temperance.
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It is the characteristic of a weak and diseased mind to fear the unfamiliar.
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If ever you come upon a grove of ancient trees which have grown to an exceptional height, shutting out a view of sky by a veil of pleached and intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot and your marvel at the thick unbroken shade in the midst of the open spaces, will prove to you the presence of deity.
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This life is only a prelude to eternity.
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I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes; and this may be done by moderate desires.
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The ascent from earth to heaven is not easy.
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Upon occasion we should go as far as intoxication.... Drink washes cares away, stirs the mind from its lowest depths.... But in liberty moderation is wholesome, and so it is in wine.... We ought not indulge too often, for fear the mind contract a bad habit, yet it is right to draw it toward elation and release and to banish dull sobriety for a little.
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No man is nobler born than another, unless he is born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition. They who make such a parade with their family pictures and pedigrees, are, properly speaking, rather to be called noted or notorious than noble persons. I thought it right to say this much, in order to repel the insolence of men who depend entirely upon chance and accidental circumstances for distinction, and not at all on public services and personal merit.
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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.