Seneca the Younger Quotes

It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.

Whatever we give to the wretched, we lend to fortune.

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

Full of men, vacant of friends.

That which achieves its effect by accident is not art.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

It is within the power of every man to live his life nobly, but of no man to live forever. Yet so many of us hope that life will go on forever, and so few aspire to live nobly.

That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.

They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.

The vices of idleness are only to be shaken off by active employment.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

There is no genius without a mixture of madness.

It is remarkable that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron, gold, and silver, being both the instruments of blood and slaughter and the price of it, nature has hidden in the bowels of the earth.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

We should have a bond of sympathy for all sentient beings, knowing that only the depraved and base take pleasure in the sight of blood and suffering.

Whatever begins, also ends.

That grief is light which can take counsel.

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

Precepts are like seeds; they are little things which do much good; if the mind which receives them has a disposition, it must not be doubted that his part contributes to the generation, and adds much to that which has been collected.

Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition.

A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.

Remember that pain has this most excellent quality. If prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot be prolonged.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

Wisdom teaches us to do, as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a colour.

It is not poverty that we praise, it is the man whom poverty cannot humble or bend.

You are your choices.

Remove severe restraint and what will become of virtue?

Whatsoever has exceeded its proper limit is in an unstable position.

It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.

Be not too hasty either with praise or blame; speak always as though you were giving evidence before the judgement-seat of the Gods.

It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

It is another's fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.

Hold fast then to this sound and wholesome rule of life; indulge the body only as far as is needful for health.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man. It is more powerful than external circumstances.

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

No one can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.

Great men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

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.

Look at the stars lighting up the sky: no one of them stays in the same place.

No man is free who is a slave to the flesh.

All I desire is, that my poverty may not be a burden to myself, or make me so to others; and that is the best state of fortune that is neither directly necessitous nor far from it. A mediocrity of fortune, with gentleness of mind, will preserve us from fear or envy; which is a desirable condition; for no man wants power to do mischief.

What were once vices are the fashion of the day.

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

God is near you, is with you, is inside you.

There is as much greatness of mind in the owning of a good turn as in the doing of it; and we must no more force a requital out of season than be wanting in it.

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

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.