Seneca Quotes

Fortune dreads the brave, and is only terrible to the coward.

The whole discord of this world consists in discords.

I am telling you to be a slow-speaking person.

To things which you bear with impatience you should accustom yourself, and, by habit you will bear them well.

He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.

Forgive that you may be forgiven.

The tempest threatens before it comes; houses creak before they fall.

To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind.

There has not been any great talent without an element of madness. -Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

It is safer to offend certain men than it is to oblige them; for as proof that they owe nothing they seek recourse in hatred.

Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than to much cunning.

We live not according to reason, but according to fashion.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

In every good man a God doth dwell.

Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by actions.

No work is of such merit as to instruct from a mere cursory perusal.

Life is long if it is full.

The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort.

You cease to be afraid when you cease to hope; for hope is accompanied by fear.

Mercy often inflicts death.

Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

No man finds it difficult to return to nature except the man who has deserted nature.

Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

We have been born under a monarchy; to obey God is freedom.

There's no delight in owning anything unshared.

Virtue hath no virtue if it be not impugned; then appeareth how great it is, of what value and power it is, when by patience it approveth what it works.

In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

Courage leads to heaven; fear leads to death.

True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model.

A benefit is estimated according to the mind of the giver.

Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots?

The mind should be allowed some relaxation, that it may return to its work all the better for the rest.

Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardship of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.

Praise thyself never.

It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.

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.

God never repents of what He has first resolved upon.

Watch over yourself. Be your own accuser, then your judge; ask yourself grace sometimes, and, if there is need, impose upon yourself some pain.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Fidelity bought with money is overcome by money.

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.

It is opportunity that makes the thief.

While we wait for life, life passes

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.

A crowd of fellow-sufferers is a miserable kind of comfort.

If sensuality were happiness, beasts were happier than men; but human felicity is lodged in the soul, not in the flesh.