Seneca the Younger Quotes
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A thing seriously pursued affords true enjoyment.
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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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The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live.
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The physician cannot prescribe by letter, he must feel the pulse.
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You roll my log, and I will roll yours.
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No one loves his country for its size or eminence, but because it's his own.
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This life is only a prelude to eternity.
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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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Greatness stands upon a precipice, and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces.
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Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.
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I am ashamed of my master and not of my servitude.
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As fate is inexorable, and not to be moved either with tears or reproaches, an excess of sorrow is as foolish as profuse laughter; while, on the other hand, not to mourn at all is insensibility.
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The world itself is too small for the covetous.
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Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool.
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Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardship of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.
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Light cares cry out; the great ones still are dumb.
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The great pilot can sail even when his canvass is rent.
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It's the admirer and the watcher who provoke us to all the inanities we commit.
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Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence. -Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium
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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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The kind of solace that arises from having company in misery is spiteful.
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An old man at school is a contemptible and ridiculous object.
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He who seeks wisdom is a wise man; he who thinks he has found it is mad.
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A dwarf is small even if he stands on a mountain; a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well.