Seneca Quotes

Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.

What narrow innocence it is for one to be good only according to the law.

It is a world of mischief that may be done by a single example of avarice or luxury. One voluptuous palate makes many more.

Time is the greatest remedy for anger.

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall always pray for leisure.

Four things does a reckless man gain who covets his neighbor's wife - demerit, an uncomfortable bed, thirdly, punishment, and lastly, hell.

The best ideas are common property.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.

The articulate, trained voice is more distracting than mere noise.

There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.

Nothing is void of God, his work is everywhere his full of himself.

The chief bond of the soldier is his oath of allegiance and love for the flag.

To forgive all is as inhuman as to forgive none

Behold a contest worthy of a god, a brave man matched in conflict with adversity.

He who repents of having sinned is almost innocent.

Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

A dwarf is small even if he stands on a mountain; a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well.

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.

Our life's a moment and less than a moment, but even this mite nature has mockingly humored with some appearance of a longer span.

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.

However wretched a fellow-mortal may be, he is still a member of our common species.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

If you don't know what port you are sailing to, no wind is favourable.

Sadness usually results from one of the following causes either when a man does not succeed, or is ashamed of his success.

Virtue is that perfect good, which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.

Life is short and art is long.

Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart.

Fate rules the affairs of men, with no recognizable order.

Death's the discharge of our debt of sorrow.

Man is a reasoning Animal.

No choice maxims - we Stoics don't practice that kind of window dressing.

You cannot, I repeat, successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time.

Drunkenness is simply voluntary insanity.

Courage leads starward, fear toward death.

Whatever is well said by another, is mine.

He who begs timidly courts a refusal.

You can only acquire it successfully if you cease to feel any sense of shame.

No evil is without its compensation ... it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss, that troubles us.

The greater part of progress is the desire to progress.

Lightning will wreck its displeasures not only upon pillars, trees, and sheep, but upon altars and temples, and let the sacrilegious go free.

Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.

It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

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.

There is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

Be harsh with yourself at times.

Luck never made a man wise.