Seneca the Younger Quotes

The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.

If you would judge, understand.

I don’t mind citing a bad author if the line is good.

Let us bear with magnanimity whatever it is needful for us to bear.

The miserable are sacred.

The sun shines even on the wicked.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

There exists no more difficult art than living.

The wise man lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything.

No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.

A great step toward independence is a good-humoured stomach.

The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon tomorrow and wastes today

If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.

The soul has this proof of divinity: that divine things delight it.

A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer.

Do the best you can . . . enjoy the present . . . rest satisfied with what you have.

Away with the world's opinion of you-it's always unsettled and divided.

Just where death is expecting you is something we cannot know; so, for your part, expect him everywhere.

He who begs timidly courts a refusal.

Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness. The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort. To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.

That which has been endured with difficulty is remedied with delight.

Obedience is yielded more readily to one who commands gently.

What difference does it make, after all, what your position in life is if you dislike it yourself?

Human society is like an arch, kept from falling by the mutual pressure of its parts

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all. . . . .

It is sometimes pleasant even to act like a madman.

He sins not, who is not wilfully a sinner.

What you do for an ungrateful man is thrown away.

The law of the pleasure in having done anything for another is, that the one almost immediately forgets having given, and the other remembers eternally having received.

It is a youthful failing to be unable to control one's impulses.

When thou hast profited so much that thou respectest even thyself, thou mayst let go thy tutor.

Accustom yourself to that which you bear ill, and you will bear it well.

We deliberate about the parcels of life, but not about life itself, and so we arrive all unawares at its different epochs, and have the trouble of beginning all again. And so finally it is that we do not walk as men confidently towards death, but let death come suddenly upon us.

Money has never yet made anyone rich.

No good thing is pleasant without friends to share it.

We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end to them.

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

Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: Not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always to take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock.

Nature ever provides for her own exigencies.

It is easier to grow in dignity than to make a start.

Time is the one thing that is given to everyone in equal measure.

He is not guilty who is not guilty of his own free will.

It is bad to live for necessity; but there is no necessity to live in necessity.

Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action. If this be true, not only do the doctrines of wisdom help us but the precepts also, which check and banish our emotions by a sort of official decree.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

It is to the interest of the commonwealth of mankind that there should be someone who is unconquered, someone against whom fortune has no power.

Life, if thou knowest how to use it, is long enough.