Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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You roll my log, and I will roll yours.
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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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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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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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Who can hope for nothing, should despair for nothing.
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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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It's the admirer and the watcher who provoke us to all the inanities we commit.
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In my own time there have been inventions of this sort, transparent windows tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building short-hand, which has been carried to such a perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is drudgery for the lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul.
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Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool.
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Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.
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Light cares cry out; the great ones still are dumb.
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He is ungrateful who denies that he has received a kindness which has been bestowed upon him; he is ungrateful who conceals it; he is ungrateful who makes no return for it; most ungrateful of all is he who forgets it.
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I am ashamed of my master and not of my servitude.
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The world itself is too small for the covetous.
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As Lucretius says: 'Thus ever from himself doth each man flee.' But what does he gain if he does not escape from himself? He ever follows himself and weighs upon himself as his own most burdensome companion. And so we ought to understand that what we struggle with is the fault, not of the places, but of ourselves
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Chance makes a plaything of a man's life.
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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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Without an adversary prowess shrivels. We see how great and efficient it really is only when it shows by endurance what it is capable of.
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Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received.
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Some laws, though unwritten, are more firmly established than all written laws.
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A coward calls himself cautious, a miser thrifty.
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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.