Seneca the Younger Quotes

The first petition that we are to make to Almighty God is for a good conscience, the next for health of mind, and then of body.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

Time discovers truth.

The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.

Courage leads to heaven; fear leads to death.

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

It is only the surprise and newness of the thing which makes that misfortune terrible which by premeditation might be made easy to us. For that which some people make light by sufferance, others do by foresight.

No evil is without its compensation.

He who has fostered the sweet poison of love by fondling it, finds it too late to refuse the yoke which he has of his own accord assumed.

How great would be our peril if our slaves began to number us!

It is the property of a great and good mind to covet, not the fruit of good deeds, but good deeds themselves, and to seek for a good man even after having met with bad men.

The profit on a good action is to have done it.

Upon occasion we should go as far as intoxication.... Drink washes cares away, stirs the mind from its lowest depths.... But in liberty moderation is wholesome, and so it is in wine.... We ought not indulge too often, for fear the mind contract a bad habit, yet it is right to draw it toward elation and release and to banish dull sobriety for a little.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

Whatever is to make us better and happy God has placed either openly before us or close to us.

Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers.

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.

A troubled countenance oft discloses much.

After death there is nothing.

Nothing is ours except time.

No one can wear a mask for very long.

Its harder for people to seek retirement from themselves than from the law

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

The most onerous slavery is to be a slave to oneself.

Whatever has overstepped its due bounds is always in a state of instability.

Demand not that I am the equal of the greatest, only that I am better than the wicked.

The poor are not the people with less, which is less desirable

Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots?

Anger is like a ruin, which, in falling upon its victim, breaks itself to pieces.

Unfamiliarity lends weight to misfortune, and there was never a man whose grief was not heightened by surprise.

The Germans, a race eager for war.

Life's like a play; it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

Don't stumble over something behind you.

We should live as if we were in public view, and think, too, as if someone could peer into the inmost recesses of our hearts-which someone can!

Happy he whoe'er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with unambitious oar keeps close to the land.

Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

The many speak highly of you, but have you really any grounds for satisfaction with yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand?

It does not matter how many books you have, but how good the books are which you have.

Ignorance is the cause of fear.

People pay the doctor for his trouble; for his kindness they still remain in his debt.

It is equally a fault to believe all men or to believe none.

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.

The stomach begs and clamors, and listens to no precepts. And yet it is not an obdurate creditor; for it is dismissed with small payment if you give it only what you owe, and not as much as you can.

The expression of truth is simplicity.

He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone.

Those alone are wise who know how to love.

The proper amount of wealth is that which neither descends to poverty nor is far distant from it.