Seneca the Younger Quotes
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Those who pass their lives in foreign travel find they contract many ties of hospitality, but form no friendships.
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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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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 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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It’s in the very trickery that it pleases me. But show me how the trick is done, and I have lost my interest therein.
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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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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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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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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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Who has more leisure than a worm?
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Make haste to live, and consider each day a life.
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There is nothing more despicable than an old man who has no other proof than his age to offer of his having lived long in the world.
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Virtue is shut out from no one; she is open to all, accepts all, invites all, gentlemen, freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles; she selects neither house nor fortune; she is satisfied with a human being without adjuncts.
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Greed's worst point is its ingratitude.
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I was not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.
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A crowd of fellow-sufferers is a miserable kind of comfort.
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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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The great pilot can sail even when his canvass is rent.
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Injustice never rules forever.
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The first step towards amendment is the recognition of error.
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Those vices luxury and neglect of decent manners are vices of men, not of the times.
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Extreme remedies are never the first to be resorted to.
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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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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.