Seneca the Younger Quotes

Sadness usually results from one of the following causes either when a man does not succeed, or is ashamed of his success.

The evil which assails us is not in the localities we inhabit but in ourselves. We lack strength to endure the least task, being incapable of suffering pain, powerless to enjoy pleasure, impatient with everything. How many invoke death when, after having tried every sort of change, they find themselves reverting to the same sensations, unable to discover any new experience.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

Nature does not turn out her work according to a single pattern; she prides herself upon her power of variation.

His head was turned by too great success.

Who needs forgiveness, should the same extend with readiness.

It is opportunity that makes the thief.

Those griefs burn most which gall in secret.

The Best sign of Wisdom is the consistency between the words and deeds.

You roll my log, and I will roll yours.

Revenge is an inhuman word.

He may as well not thank at all, who thanks when none are by.

It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness it is to be expecting evil before it comes.

A hungry people listens not to reason, not cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.

Many shed tears merely for show, and have dry eyes when no one's around to observe them.

It is easy enough to arouse in a listener a desire for what is honorable; for in every one of us nature has laid the foundations or sown the seeds of the virtues. We are born to them all, all of us, and when a person comes along with the necessary stimulus, then those qualities of the personality are awakened, so to speak, from their slumber.

Life is short and art is long.

Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.

He who seeks wisdom is a wise man; he who thinks he has found it is mad.

If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not communicate it, I would refuse the gift.

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

The important thing about a problem is not its solution, but the strength we gain in finding the solution

Disease is not of the body but of the place.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

He who asks with timidity invites a refusal.

The man who thinks only of his own generation is born for few.

So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.

It is not goodness to be better than the worst.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it.

It is only luxury and avarice that make poverty grievous to us; for it is a very small matter that does our business, and when we have provided against cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but vanity and excess.

How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant are the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same.

So live with an inferior as you would wish a superior to live with you.

Virtue with some is nothing but successful temerity.

Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.

Nothing costs so much as what is bought by prayers.

...the geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough....You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life?

The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow; and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched.

True friends are the whole world to one another; and he that is a friend to himself is also a friend to mankind. Even in my studies the greatest delight I take is of imparting it to others; for there is no relish to me in the possessing of anything without a partner.

Corporeal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other.

Nature has made us passive, and to suffer is our lot. While we are in the flesh every man has his chain and his clog; only it is looser and lighter to one man than to another, and he is more at ease who takes it up and carries it than he who drags it.

Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool.

For what else is Nature but God and the Divine Reason that pervades the whole universe and all its parts.