Seneca the Younger Quotes

As long as you live, learn how to live.

Not he who has little, but he whose wishes more, is poor.

The worst evil of all is to leave the ranks of the living before one dies.

There is nothing which persevering effort and unceasing and diligent care cannot accomplish.

We pardon familiar vices.

It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.

Apples taste sweetest when they're going.

While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned.

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.

Who shrinks from knowledge of his calamities but aggravates his fear; troubles half seen, shall torture all the more.

Epicurus says, "gratitude is a virtue that has commonly profit annexed to it." And where is the virtue that has not? But still the virtue is to be valued for itself, and not for the profit that attends it.

Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing.

What you think is the summit is only a step up

Sovereignty over any foreign land is insecure.

He who is everywhere is nowhere.

Praise thyself never.

The young man must store up, the old man must use.

A man can refrain from wanting what he has not and cheerfully make the best of a bird in the hand.

As gratitude is a necessary, and a glorious virtue, so also it is an obvious, a cheap, and an easy one; so obvious that wherever there is life there is a place for it; so cheap, that the covetous man may be gratified without expense, and so easy that the sluggard may be so likewise without labor.

A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.

We have lost morals, justice, honor, piety and faith, and that sense of shame which, once lost, can never be restored.

Retire into yourself as much as possible. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one. People learn as they teach.

No wind blows in favor of a ship without direction.

We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?

The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.

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

Let him that hath done the good office conceal it; let him that received it disclose it.

That loss is most discreditable which is caused by negligence.

He who comes to a conclusion when the other side is unheard, may have been just in his conclusion, but yet has not been just in his conduct.

If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.

The way to wickedness is always through wickedness.

All that lies betwixt the cradle and the grave is uncertain.

These individulas have riches just as we say that we 'have a fever,' when really the fever has us.

The Fates guide those who go willingly. Those who do not, they drag.

It is part of the cure to wish to be cured.

It is the sign of a weak mind to be unable to bear wealth.

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

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

An unpopular rule is never long maintained.

The voice of flattery affects us after it has ceased, just as after a concert men find some agreeable air ringing in their ears to the exclusion of all serious business.

He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

Men practice war; beasts do not.

We are born to lose and to perish, to hope and to fear, to vex ourselves and others; and there is no antidote against a common calamity but virtue; for the foundation of true joy is in the conscience.

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.

There is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself.

Levity of behavior is the bane of all that is good and virtuous.