Seneca the Younger Quotes

The sovereign good of man is a mind that subjects all things to itself and is itself subject to nothing; such a man's pleasures are modest and reserved, and it may be a question whether he goes to heaven, or heaven comes to him; for a good man is influenced by God Himself, and has a kind of divinity within him.

He who receives a benefit with gratitude, repays the first installment of it.

It is a tedious thing to be always beginning life; they live badly who always begin to live.

Know thyself; this is the great object.

Economy is too late when you are at the bottom of your purse.

He who forbids not sin when he may, commands it

Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures.

There is no satisfaction in any good without a companion.

A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.

To wish to be well is a part of becoming well.

To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.

The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.

The voice is nothing but beaten air.

Life is a play.It's not its length,but its performance that counts.

The friends of the unfortunate live a long way off.

The heart is great which shows moderation in the midst of prosperity.

That day which you fear as being the end of all things is the birthday of your eternity.

He, who will not pardon others, must not himself expect pardon.

What-so-ever the mind has ordained for itself, it has achieved

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

Where reason fails, time oft has worked a cure.

He will live ill who does not know how to die well.

I require myself not to be equal to the best, but to be better then the bad.

We ought not to confine ourselves either to writing or to reading; the one, continuous writing, will cast a gloom over our strength, and exhaust it; the other will make our strength flabby and watery. It is better to have recourse to them alternately, and to blend one with the other, so that the fruits of one's reading may be reduced to concrete form by the pen.

That which takes effect by chance is not an art.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

A man who has taken your time recognises no debt; yet it is the one he can never repay.

While we teach, we learn.

Time discovers truth. Time heals what reason cannot.

I don't trust liberals, I trust conservatives.

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

Death: There's nothing bad about it at all except the thing that comes before it-the fear of it.

One must take all one's life to learn how to leave, and what will perhaps make you wonder more, one must take all one's life to learn how to die.

A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his position, which after all is only something we wear like clothing.

Genius has never been accepted without a measure of condonement.

In war there is no prize for runner-up.

Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.

Virtue is nothing else than right reason

Dead, we become the lumber of the world, And to that mass of matter shall be swept Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.

True happiness is...to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

The hour which gives us life begins to take it away.

There has never been any great genius without a spice of madness.

No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another, if thou wishest to live for thyself.

The artist finds a greater pleasure in painting than in having completed the picture.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.

Our words should aim not to please, but to help.

The physician cannot prescribe by letter, he must feel the pulse.

Begin at once to live, and count each day as a separate life.