Seneca. Quotes

#1. Nothing satisfies greed, but even a little satisfies nature.

Seneca.

#2. If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality.

Seneca.

#3. We must, therefore, take a less serious view of all things, tolerating them in a spirit of acceptance: It is more human to laugh at life than to weep tears over it.

Seneca.

#4. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

Seneca.

#5. It is uncertain where Death will await you;
there expect it everywhere.

Seneca.

#6. There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more in our imagination than in reality.

Seneca.

#7. For a person who is not aware that he is doing anything wrong has no desire to be put right. You have to catch yourself doing it before you can reform.

Seneca.

#8. There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

Seneca.

#9. We Stoics are not subjects of a despot: each of us lays claim to his own freedom.

Seneca.

#10. What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.

Seneca.

#11. The boon that could be given can be withdrawn.

Seneca.

#12. Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Seneca.

#13. Gold tests with fire, woman with gold, man with woman

Seneca.

#14. None of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die. None of them will exhaust your years, but each will contribute his years to yours.

Seneca.

#15. No time is too short for criminals to do wrong.

Seneca.

#16. Mankind is perpetually the victim of a pointless and futile martydom, fretting life away in fruitless worries though failure to realise what limit is set to acquisition and to the growth of genuine pleasure

Seneca.

#17. What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then?

Seneca.

#18. We must indulge the mind and from time to time allow it the leisure which is its food and strength.

Seneca.

#19. I never spend a day in idleness; I appropriate even a part of the night for study. I do not allow time for sleep but yield to it when I must, and when my eyes are wearied with waking and ready to fall shut, I keep them at their task.

Seneca.

#20. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.

Seneca.

#21. It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver, and a man who treats his silver as if it was earthenware is no less great.

Seneca.

#22. we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed, Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

Seneca.

#23. Am I not to inquire into the identity of the artist of this universe?

Seneca.

#24. Ask nature: she will tell you that she made both day and night.

Seneca.

#25. There will always be causes for anxiety, whether due to prosperity or to wretchedness. Life will be driven on through a succession of preoccupations: we shall always long for leisure, but never enjoy it.

Seneca.

#26. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom yourself can improve. Men learn while they teach.

Seneca.

#27. It makes no difference how important the provocation may be, but into what kind of soul it penetrates. Similarly with fire; it does not matter how great is the flame, but what it falls upon.

Seneca.

#28. There is only one relief for great sufferings, and that is to endure and surrender to their compulsion.

Seneca.

#29. What is death? Either a transition or an end. I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here.

Seneca.

#30. Regard [a friend] as loyal, and you will make him loyal.

Seneca.

#31. Ab honesto virum bonum nihil deterret. (Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable.)-A Wrinkle in Time

Seneca.

#32. Since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it.

Seneca.

#33. For what good does it do us to guide a horse and control his speed with the curb, and then find that our own passions, utterly uncurbed, bolt with us? Or to beat many opponents in wrestling or boxing, and then to find that we ourselves are beaten by anger?

Seneca.

#34. For men cease to possess all things the moment they desire all things for their own.

Seneca.

#35. Leisure without study is death; it is a tomb for the living man.

Seneca.

#36. What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water?

Seneca.

#37. It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

Seneca.

#38. Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

Seneca.

#39. But every great and overpowering grief must take away the capacity to choose words, since it often stifles the voice itself.

Seneca.

#40. But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. Devote yourself entirely to her. You're worthy of her, she's worthy of you-fall into each other's arms. Say a firm, plain no to every other occupation.

Seneca.

#41. Ignorance is the cause of fear.

Seneca.

#42. But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.

Seneca.

#43. No man's good by accident. Virtue has to be learnt.

Seneca.

#44. Why are you idle? If you don't grasp it first, it flees.' And even if you do grasp it, it will still flee. So you must match time's swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow. In

Seneca.

#45. Here is your great soul - the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.

Seneca.

#46. I will storm the gods, and shake the universe.

Seneca.

#47. No man finds it difficult to return to nature, except the man who has deserted nature. We

Seneca.

#48. The happy life is a life that is in harmony with its own nature.

Seneca.

#49. It is the sign of a weak mind to be unable to bear wealth.

Seneca.

#50. No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours.

Seneca.

#51. No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity

Seneca.

#52. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

Seneca.

#53. Besides, he who is feared, fears also; no one has been able to arouse terror and live in peace of mind.

Seneca.

#54. ...nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation.

Seneca.

#55. It is a question whether he died by his own hand; for he fell from a sudden wound received in his groin, some doubting whether his death was voluntary, no one, whether it was timely. It

Seneca.

#56. If an evil has been pondered beforehand, the blow is gentle when it comes.

Seneca.

#57. For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them

Seneca.

#58. You must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish, and avoid those which get bigger as you proceed and do not cease where you had intended.

Seneca.

#59. A man who makes a decision without listening to both sides is unjust, even if his ruling is a fair one.

Seneca.

#60. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.

Seneca.

#61. Anyone who likes may make things easier for himself by viewing them with equanimity.

Seneca.

#62. Therefore whenever his last day comes, the wise man will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step.

Seneca.

#63. Soft living imposes on us the penalty of debility; we cease to be able to do the things we've long been grudging about doing.

Seneca.

#64. It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

Seneca.

#65. No one dies except on his own day. You are throwing away none of your own time; for what you leave behind does not belong to you.

Seneca.

#66. Anger will abate and become more controlled when it knows it must come before a judge each day.

Seneca.

#67. For we are not summoned according to the paristi register And besides there is no man so old as to make it sinful to expect another day. Now every day is another step in life.

Seneca.

#68. Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement.

Seneca.

#69. The day which we fear as our last
is but the birthday of eternity.

Seneca.

#70. It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, - the superfluous things that wear our togas threadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores. That which is enough is ready to our hands. He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.

Seneca.

#71. I think the pinnacle of misfortune is to be forced by chance to want things one should loathe.

Seneca.

#72. There is no favorable wind for the sailor who doesn't know where to go

Seneca.

#73. In the ashes all men are levelled. We're born unequal, we die equal.

Seneca.

#74. Part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach; nothing, however outstanding and however helpful, will ever give me any pleasure if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone.

Seneca.

#75. So it is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil.

Seneca.

#76. Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.

Seneca.

#77. A guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection, but never to feel sure of it.

Seneca.

#78. There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca.

#79. We are members of one great body, planted by nature ... . We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole

Seneca.

#80. Vices have to be crushed rather than picked at.

Seneca.

#81. Read good books many times,
rather than many books

Seneca.

#82. How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you away.

Seneca.

#83. It takes you more time to solve a problem than to set it.

Seneca.

#84. It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

Seneca.

#85. No one becomes a laughingstock who laughs at himself.

Seneca.

#86. Stop preventing philosophers from possessing money; no one has condemned wisdom to poverty. I will despise whatever lies in the domain of Fortune, but if a choice is offered, I will choose the better half.

Seneca.

#87. Bonis nocet, qui malis parcit.
He harms the good (people) who spares the evil.

Seneca.

#88. No matter how many men you kill, you can't kill your successor.

Seneca.

#89. let us keep to the way which Nature has mapped out for us, and let us not swerve therefrom. If we follow Nature, all is easy and unobstructed; but if we combat Nature, our life differs not a whit from that of men who row against the current.

Seneca.

#90. This evil of taking our cue from others has become so deeply ingrained that even that most basic feeling, grief, degenerates into imitation.

Seneca.

#91. O how many noble deeds of women are lost in obscurity!

Seneca.

#92. No one willingly reverts to the past unless all his actions have passed his own censorship, which is never deceived.

Seneca.

#93. Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits, After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.

Seneca.

#94. While we teach, we learn.

Seneca.

#95. Theseus: What is the crime for which you must pay by death?
Phaedra: My life.

Seneca.

#96. The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.

Seneca.

#97. Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at.

Seneca.

#98. The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.

Seneca.

#99. For what can be above the man who is above fortune?

Seneca.

#100. There is but one chain holding us in fetters, and that is our love of life.

Seneca.