Top 100 Seneca The Younger Quotes
#2. The declaration of love may come sooner than expected. Take time before you reciprocate as this may simply be a statement of what they expect from you.
Seneca The Younger
#4. A man's ability cannot possibly be of one sort and his soul of another. If his soul be well-ordered, serious and restrained, his ability also is sound and sober. Conversely, when the one degenerates, the other is contaminated.
Seneca The Younger
#11. No man esteems anything that comes to him by chance; but when it is governed by reason, it brings credit both to the giver and receiver; whereas those favors are in some sort scandalous that make a man ashamed of his patron.
Seneca The Younger
#13. 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.
Seneca The Younger
#14. It is by the benefit of letters that absent friends are in a manner brought together.
Seneca The Younger
#15. Dangerous is wrath concealed. Hatred proclaimed doth lose its chance of wreaking vengeance.
Seneca The Younger
#16. One who's our friend is fond of us; one who's fond of us isn't necessarily our friend.
Seneca The Younger
#18. Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots?
Seneca The Younger
#20. The key to getting everything you want is to never put all your begs in one ask-it!
Seneca The Younger
#22. If we desire to judge justly, we must persuade ourselves that none of us is without sin.
Seneca The Younger
#27. 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.
Seneca The Younger
#28. A king is he who has laid fear aside and the base longings of an evil heart; whom ambition unrestrained and the fickle favor of the reckless mob move not.
Seneca The Younger
#30. There is no benefit so large that malignity will not lessen it; none so narrow that a good interpretation will not enlarge it.
Seneca The Younger
#33. The stomach begs and clamors, and listens to no precepts. And yet it is not an obdurate creditor; for it is dismissed with small payment if you give it only what you owe, and not as much as you can.
Seneca The Younger
#34. Live among others as if God beheld you; speak to God as if others were listening.
Seneca The Younger
#35. Watch over yourself. Be your own accuser, then your judge; ask yourself grace sometimes, and, if there is need, impose upon yourself some pain.
Seneca The Younger
#36. Everything that exceeds the bounds of moderation has an unstable foundation.
Seneca The Younger
#37. Be not too hasty either with praise or blame; speak always as though you were giving evidence before the judgement-seat of the Gods.
Seneca The Younger
#40. Hesitation is the best cure for anger. The first blows of anger are heavy, but if it waits, it will think again.
Seneca The Younger
#41. Fortune's not content with knocking a man down; she sends him spinning head over heels, crash upon crash.
Seneca The Younger
#43. 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.
Seneca The Younger
#44. Virtue needs a director and guide. Vice can be learned even without a teacher.
Seneca The Younger
#45. No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.
Seneca The Younger
#48. It is only luxury and avarice that make poverty grievous to us; for it is a very small matter that does our business, and when we have provided against cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but vanity and excess.
Seneca The Younger
#49. Men can be divided into 2 groups: one that goes ahead and achieves something, and one that comes after and criticizes.
Seneca The Younger
#51. 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
#53. 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
#55. 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
#57. We ought to take outdoor walks, to refresh and raise our spirits by deep breathing in the open air.
Seneca The Younger
#58. 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
#60. He who boasts of his pedigree praises that which does not belong to him.
Seneca The Younger
#61. 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
#62. Tranqility is a certain quality of mind, which no condition or fortune can either exalt or depress.
Seneca The Younger
#63. 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
#64. You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.
Seneca The Younger
#65. On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.
Seneca The Younger
#69. 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
#75. It's the admirer and the watcher who provoke us to all the inanities we commit.
Seneca The Younger
#76. Those whom fortune has never favored are more joyful than those whom she has deserted.
Seneca The Younger
#79. How can a thing possibly govern others when it cannot be governed itself?
Seneca The Younger
#80. Why will no man confess his faults? Because he continues to indulge in them; a man cannot tell his dream till he wakes.
Seneca The Younger
#83. A dwarf is small even if he stands on a mountain; a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well.
Seneca The Younger
#85. Happy he whoe'er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with unambitious oar keeps close to the land.
Seneca The Younger
#86. No one loves his country for its size or eminence, but because it's his own.
Seneca The Younger
#87. Wisdom teaches us to do, as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a colour.
Seneca The Younger
#88. There are no greater wretches in the world than many of those whom people in general take to be happy.
Seneca The Younger
#89. 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
#92. The wise man will always reflect concerning the quality not the quantity of life.
Seneca The Younger
#94. 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.
Seneca The Younger
#100. 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
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
