Seneca the Younger Quotes
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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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To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand
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Precepts are like seeds; they are little things which do much good; if the mind which receives them has a disposition, it must not be doubted that his part contributes to the generation, and adds much to that which has been collected.
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That which achieves its effect by accident is not art.
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It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.
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I was not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.
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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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No action will be considered blameless, unless the will was so, for by the will the act was dictated.
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Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain.
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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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The origin of all mankind was the same; it is only a clear and good conscience that makes a man noble, for that is derived from heaven itself.
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To see a man fearless in dangers, untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.
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Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.
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The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations.
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The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.
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Chance makes a plaything of a man's life.
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To the believers it is true. To the wise it is false. To the leaders it is useful.
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Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.
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Trifling trouble find utterance; deeply felt pangs are silent.
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A hungry people listens not to reason, not cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.
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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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To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.
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I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling
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Make haste to live, and consider each day a life.