Seneca The Younger Quotes

War I abhor, and yet how sweet The sound along the marching street Of drum and fife, and I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul.

Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.

Philosophy is good advice, and no one gives good advice at the top of his lungs.

When modesty has once perished, it will never revive.

What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend. That is progress indeed

Freedom can't be kept for nothing. If you set a high value on liberty, you must set a low value on everything else.

Nothing is so false as human life, nothing so treacherous. God knows no one would have accepted it as a gift, if it had not been given without our knowledge.

Now we are not merely to stick knowledge on to the soul: we must incorporate it into her; the soul should not be sprinkled with knowledge but steeped in it.

We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.

Elegance is not an ornament worthy of man.

You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.

There exists no more difficult art than living.

Those alone are wise who know how to love.

Shall I tell you what philosophy holds out to humanity? Counsel...You are called in to help the unhappy.

Death is sometimes a punishment, often a gift; to many it has been a favor.

That which takes effect by chance is not an art.

Necessity is stronger than duty.

Poverty needs much, avarice everything.

It's the great soul that surrenders itself to fate, but a puny degenerate thing that struggles.

Fine conduct is always spontaneous.

He who fears from near at hand often fears less.

Genius has never been accepted without a measure of condonement.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

The profit on a good action is to have done it.

All my life I have been seeking to climb out of the pit of my besetting sins and I cannot do it and I never will unless a hand is let down to draw me up.

To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.-

We pray for trifles without so much as a thought of the greatest blessings; and we are not ashamed many times, to ask God for that which we should blush to own to our neighbor.

Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts is therefore slow and tedious, whilst that of examples is summary and effectual.

He is greedy of life who is not willing to die when the world is perishing around him.

Know thyself; this is the great object.

Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all his plate is no more that earthenware.

It is the property of a great and good mind to covet, not the fruit of good deeds, but good deeds themselves, and to seek for a good man even after having met with bad men.

There are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery.

Why do people not confess vices? It is because they have not yet laid them aside. It is a waking person only who can tell their dreams.

That which achieves its effect by accident is not art.

We learn not for life but for the debating-room.

Something that can never be learnt too thoroughly can never be said too often.

Virtue is nothing else than right reason

Truth never perishes.

To be everywhere is to be nowhere.

It is rash to condemn where you are ignorant.

Simple is the language of truth.

The key to getting everything you want is to never put all your begs in one ask-it!

If I only have the will to be grateful, I am so.

A hungry people listens not to reason, not cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.

I had rather never receive a kindness than never bestow one.

He who forbids not sin when he may, commands it

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

The expression of truth is simplicity.

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.