Seneca The Younger Quotes

Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than to much cunning.

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

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.

The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.

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

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.

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

Fidelity bought with money is overcome by money.

Retirement without the love of letters is a living burial.

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

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

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

Praise thyself never.

There's one blessing only, the source and cornerstone of beatitude: confidence in self.

Forgive that you may be forgiven.

There is nothing more despicable than an old man who has no other proof than his age to offer of his having lived long in the world.

While we wait for life, life passes

So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.

Life is most delightful on the downward slope.

What view is one likely to take of the state of a person's mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no constraint?

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

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

The whole discord of this world consists in discords.

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

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

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

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.

Courage leads to heaven; fear leads to death.

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

Lay hold of today's task, and you will not depend so much upon tomorrow's.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

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

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

The true felicity of life is to be free from anxieties and pertubations; to understand and do our duties to God and man, and to enjoy the present without any serious dependence on the future.

Whenever you hold a fellow creature in distress, remember that he is a man.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

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

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.

The gladiator is formulating his plan in the arena or essentially Too late.

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.

It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.

There is the need for someone against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler, you won't make the crooked straight.

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

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

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

If thou wishest to get rid of thy evil propensities, thou must keep far from evil companions.

Drunkenness does not create vice; it merely brings it into view.

Be harsh with yourself at times.

Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so shall I choose my death when I am about to depart from life.

No man ever became wise by chance.