Seneca the Younger Quotes
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We should live as if we were in public view, and think, too, as if someone could peer into the inmost recesses of our hearts-which someone can!
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Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain.
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A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.
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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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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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Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.
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The philosopher: he alone knows how to live for himself. He is the one, in fact, who knows the fundamental thing: how to live.
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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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Necessity is stronger than duty.
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The ascent from earth to heaven is not easy.
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Those whom true love has held, it will go on holding.
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The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live.
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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.
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This life is only a prelude to eternity.
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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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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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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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A thing seriously pursued affords true enjoyment.
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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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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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There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.
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Who can hope for nothing, should despair for nothing.
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Abstinence is easier than temperance.