Seneca Quotes

Fortune's not content with knocking a man down; she sends him spinning head over heels, crash upon crash.

Away with the world's opinion of you-it's always unsettled and divided.

Fortune can take away riches, but not courage.

Authority founded on injustice is never of long duration.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.

The thing that matters is not what you bear, but how you bear it

A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.

It is never too late to learn what is always necessary to know.

The path of increase is slow, but the road to ruin is rapid.

Prosperity asks for fidelity; adversity exacts it.

The soul has this proof of divinity: that divine things delight it.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs.

Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.

It goes far toward making a man faithful to let him understand that you think him so; and he that does but suspect I will deceive him, gives me a sort of right to do so.

Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.

With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.

How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant are the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same.

Whoever has nothing to hope, let him despair of nothing.

No man was ever wise by chance.

A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.

Add each day something to fortify you against poverty and death.

Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.

Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.

No possession is gratifying without a companion.

Golden roofs break men's rest.

Disease is not of the body but of the place.

Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence. -Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium

For the great benefits of our being- our life, health, and reason-we look upon ourselves.

My joy in learning is partly that it enables me to teach.

The greatest power of ruling consists in the exercise of self-control.

Nihil tam acerbum est in quo non æquus animus solatium inveniat. There is nothing so disagreeable, that a patient mind can not find some solace for it.

It is extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

What is the proper limit for wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary; and, second, to have what is enough.

Every guilty person is his own hangman.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short... if one follows patterns.

Principles are like seeds; they are little things which do much good, if the mind that receives them has the right attitudes.

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit

Leisure without literature is death and burial alive.

Who is everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

The man who thinks only of his own generation is born for few.

Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

He who is everywhere is nowhere.

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

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

No man will swim ashore and take his baggage with him.