Top 100 Quotes About Seneca
#1. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. What
Herman Melville
#2. proverb attributed to Seneca that says, "A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer.
Anonymous
#3. Light griefs can speak: deep sorrows are dumb." - Seneca, Hippolytus, act ii. scene 3.] A
Michel De Montaigne
#4. Think about what I said, Kat. You have nothing to prove."
"I don't?"
"No," I said, and I'd say it a thousand times.
But I knew screaming it from the top of Seneca Rocks wasn't going to change how she felt.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#5. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind. To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
-Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, II
Denise Gigante
#6. Seneca describes this in an extraordinary passage, in which he astutely observes that most human suffering relates to rumination about the past or worry about the future, and that nobody confines his concern to the present moment.
Anonymous
#7. How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did? He committed suicide!
Oriana Fallaci
#8. Seneca did this too: Place before your mind's eye the vast spread of time's abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our so-called human life with infinity.
Sarah Bakewell
#9. Philosophers should be, as Seneca put it, 'lawyers for humanity'. Make what you think and feel count; the examined life has global dimensions.
Martha C. Nussbaum
#10. Skyler often thought that the Seneca quotation Poe included was a dig at Dupin-or perhaps Poe himself: Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. "Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness." "That's for sure," said Skyler aloud. "Or more succintly put, 'No one likes a smart ass'.
Haley Walsh
#11. There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
- Seneca
Seneca.
#12. There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, "That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults." Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.
Joseph Addison
#13. Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#14. Seneca brings vividly before us a picture of the various scholars assembled in a school of the philosophers.
Frederic William Farrar
#15. No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbour, if you would live for yourself. - SENECA
Jonathan Haidt
#16. Whether the prayer of Seneca was granted we do not know; but, as we do not again hear of Marcus, it is probable that he died before his father, and that the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, became extinct in the second generation.
Frederic William Farrar
#17. Never have I trusted Fortune,' writes Seneca, 'even when she seemed to be at peace. All her generous bounties - money, office, influence - I deposited where she could ask for them back without disturbing me.
Oliver Burkeman
#18. The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long" "How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love" "9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings" Anything about Alan Watts: "Alan Watts has changed my life. I've written about him quite a bit.
Timothy Ferriss
#19. Demalion, we're alive.' Pantera's voice was unusually clipped, as if his patience had finally run to an end. 'If we were trying to get ourselves killed, we three would have managed it, I think. Two officers of the Fifth and a spy trained by Seneca could manage that much at least.
M.C. Scott
#20. Why does any martyr cooperate with his judases? ... We see a game beyond the endgame ... As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.
David Mitchell
#21. Seneca: Fate guides the willing but drags the unwilling.
Eric Greitens
#22. Throughout the whole of life one must continue to learn to live and what will amaze you even more, throughout life you must learn to die. Seneca (Roman philosopher)
Seneca The Younger
#23. "When we do not know what harbor we are making for," the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, "no wind is the right wind." Persons have vision only when they have a dream that drives them on.
Joan D. Chittister
#24. Seneca's version of that Stoicism is antifragility from fate. No downside from Lady Fortuna, plenty of upside.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#25. Nero: "Am I forbidden to do what all may do?"
Seneca: "From high rank high example is expected.
Seneca.
#26. When you talk about Lacrosse, you talk about the lifeblood of the six nations. The game is ingrained into our culture and our system and our lives. (the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora)
Oren Lyons
#27. I guess this is a bad time to mention I hung a dummy and painted Seneca Crane's name on it ...
Suzanne Collins
#28. Seneca devoted much of his time to writing essays in praise of poverty, and in lending money at usurious rates.
Josh Billings
#29. To be everywhere is to be nowhere. - SENECA
Chris Bailey
#30. The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the apothecary is of more importance than Seneca; and that half the unhappiness in the world proceeds from little stoppages; from a duct choked up, from food pressing in the wrong place, from a vexed duodenum, or an agitated pylorus.
Sydney Smith
#31. In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases. - SENECA
Ryan Holiday
#32. For this indiscretion Seneca relegates the emperor (Claudius) to a Sisyphean gamester's hell: condemned eternally to pick up the bones and thow them into a dice cup that has no bottom.
Ricky Jay
#33. You say there is but one way to worship the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Chief Red Jacket, Seneca Indian Chieftain
George Washington
#34. Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species.
Rafael Sabatini
#35. Master Seneca says that 'No one can wear a mask for very long.' This is true; but someone can wear different masks for very long!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#36. The decision of such judges as Claudius and his Senate is worth very little in the question of a man's innocence or guilt; but the sentence was that Seneca should be banished to the island of Corsica.
Frederic William Farrar
#37. Seneca and stoicism as a back door to explain why everything antifragile has to have more upside than downside
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#38. It's not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. -Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Seneca.
#39. Seneca thinks the gods are well pleased when they see great men contending with adversity.
Robert A. Burton
#41. Besides advising us to avoid people with vices, Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, "who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint.
William B. Irvine
#42. Do not be interested in the quantity of people who respect and admire you, but in their quality. If bad people dislike you, so much the better. - LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
Leo Tolstoy
#43. If we are overly sensitive, we will be quick to anger. More generally, says Seneca, if we coddle ourselves, if we allow ourselves to be corrupted by pleasure, nothing will seem bearable to us, and the reason things will seem unbearable is not because they are hard but because we are soft.
William B. Irvine
#44. According to Seneca, Apicius committed suicide because, having spent one tenth of a considerable fortune on his kitchen, he realized that he could not long continue in the style he had chosen.
Mark Kurlansky
#45. Seneca's virtue shows forth so live and vigorous in his writings, and the defense is so clear there against some of these imputations, as that of his wealth and excessive spending, that I would not believe any testimony to the contrary.
Michel De Montaigne
#46. Polly Findlay showed real insight and imagination in her production of my translation of Seneca's Thyestes at the Arcola. I enjoyed her use of the space and the detail of her work with the actors, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with Light Shining.
Caryl Churchill
#47. And the house Kyler and I rented is actually near Seneca Rocks, so it's not that remote. It isn't like you're going to run into the chupacabra or a pack of aliens.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#48. Did I not feel that the time has come for the questions of women's wrongs to be laid before the public? Did I not believe that women herself must do this work, for women alone understand the height, the depth, the breadth of her degradation.
- Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#49. Seneca put it, life does not pause to remind you that it is running out.
Sarah Bakewell
#50. In my office, I have a very beautiful marble bust of Seneca. I always have my eye on him when I'm taking phone calls. He's one of the many philosophers I've always read and admired.
Brunello Cucinelli
#51. Nothing satisfies greed, but even a little satisfies nature.
Seneca.
#52. What madness it is for a man to starve himself to enrich his heir, and so turn a friend into an enemy! For his joy at your death will be proportioned to what you leave him.
Seneca The Younger
#53. It's the admirer and the watcher who provoke us to all the inanities we commit.
Seneca The Younger
#55. Be aware, then, that every human condition is subject to change, and that whatever mishap can befall any man can also happen to you.
Seneca.
#60. How long will this last?' This feeling has caused kings to bewail their power, and they were not so much delighted by the greatness of their fortune as terrified by the thought of its inevitable end.
Seneca.
#61. If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality.
Seneca.
#62. As fate is inexorable, and not to be moved either with tears or reproaches, an excess of sorrow is as foolish as profuse laughter; while, on the other hand, not to mourn at all is insensibility.
Seneca The Younger
#65. Sometimes people can surprise you. Sometimes they have a great capacity to hear the truth.
Joe Seneca
#66. When we have done everything within our power, we shall possess a great deal: but we once possessed the world.
Seneca.
#67. The day which we fear is out last is buth the birthday of eternity
Seneca.
#70. We are indeed apt to ascribe certain faults to the place or to the time; but those faults will follow us, no matter how we change our place.
Seneca.
#71. On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.
Seneca The Younger
#72. There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
#73. There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
#74. Every one has time if he likes. Business runs after nobody: people cling to it of their own free will and think that to be busy is a proof of happiness.
Seneca The Younger
#75. Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.
Seneca The Younger
#78. He who is brave is free
Seneca.
#79. May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
#80. Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
#81. Tranqility is a certain quality of mind, which no condition or fortune can either exalt or depress.
Seneca The Younger
#83. 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.
Seneca The Younger
#84. He who boasts of his pedigree praises that which does not belong to him.
Seneca The Younger
#86. We are born to lose and to perish, to hope and to fear, to vex ourselves and others; and there is no antidote against a common calamity but virtue; for the foundation of true joy is in the conscience.
Seneca The Younger
#87. We ought to take outdoor walks, to refresh and raise our spirits by deep breathing in the open air.
Seneca The Younger
#89. Let us take pleasure in what we have received and make no comparison; no man will ever be happy if tortured by the greater happiness of another.
Seneca.
#90. I am like a book, with pages that have stuck together for want of use: my mind needs unpacking and the truths stored within must be turned over from time to time, to be ready when occasion demands.
Seneca The Younger
#92. The way is long if one follows precepts, but short ... if one follows patterns.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
#94. Providence which could be spoken of, almost according to choice or context, under a variety of names or descriptions including the divine reason, creative reason, nature,
Seneca.
#95. 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.
Seneca The Younger
#96. And what's so bad about your being deprived of that? ... All things seem unbearable to people who have become spoilt, who have become soft through a life of luxury, ailing more in the mind than they ever are in the body.
Seneca.
#98. You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.
Seneca The Younger
#99. It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.
Seneca The Younger
#100. It is a small part of life we really live.' Indeed, all the rest is not life but merely time.
Seneca.
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