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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It is the characteristic of a weak and diseased mind to fear the unfamiliar.
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It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.
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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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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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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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Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence. -Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium
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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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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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Trifling trouble find utterance; deeply felt pangs are silent.
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Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain.
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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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Chance makes a plaything of a man's life.
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The ascent from earth to heaven is not easy.
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Extreme remedies are never the first to be resorted to.
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The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.
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Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.
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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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To the believers it is true. To the wise it is false. To the leaders it is useful.
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Dissembling profiteth nothing; a feigned countenance, and slightly forged externally, deceiveth but very few.
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The state of that man's mind who feels too intense an interest as to future events, must be most deplorable.