Seneca The Younger Quotes

Choose as a guide one whom you will admire more when you see him act than when you hear him speak.

No one can be despised by another until he has learned to despise himself.

Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.

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

The more violent the storm the sooner it is over.

Some lack the fickleness to live as they wish and just live as they have begun.

The most happy ought to wish for death.

Full of men, vacant of friends.

I was shipwrecked before I got aboard.

Let us ask what is best - not what is customary. Let us love temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed.

It's the admirer and the watcher who provoke us to all the inanities we commit.

What a vile and abject thing is man if he do not raise himself above humanity.

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live.

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

To forgive all is as inhuman as to forgive none

He who is penitent is almost innocent.

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

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

The part of life which we really live is short.

To be feared is to fear. No one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind.

Real improvement is of slow growth only.

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

There is no power greater than true affection.

Disease is not of the body but of the place.

If sensuality were happiness, beasts were happier than men; but human felicity is lodged in the soul, not in the flesh.

Philosophy is the health of the mind.

He who fears from near at hand often fears less.

It should be our care not so much to live a long life as a satisfactory one.

What does reason demand of a man? A very easy thing-to live in accord with his own nature.

No possession is gratifying without a companion.

Misfortune is the test of a person's merit.

No good thing is pleasant without friends to share it.

A well-governed appetite is a great part of liberty

Some laws, though unwritten, are more firmly established than all written laws.

No wind blows in favor of a ship without direction.

You cannot, I repeat, successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time.

To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind.

It is rash to condemn where you are ignorant.

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.

Be harsh with yourself at times.

Before old age I took care to live well; in old age I take care to die well; but to die well is to die willingly.

Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration ...

If virtue precede us every step will be safe.

The voice is nothing but beaten air.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

So enjoy the pleasures of the hour as not to spoil those that are to follow.

Speech is the index of the mind.

Remember, not one penny can we take with us into the unknown land.

Forgive that you may be forgiven.

Where reason fails, time oft has worked a cure.

Servitude seizes on few, but many seize on her.

The state of that man's mind who feels too intense an interest as to future events, must be most deplorable.

One who's our friend is fond of us; one who's fond of us isn't necessarily our friend.

Everything may happen.

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

Let no man give advice to others that he has not first given himself.

Concealed anger is to be feared; but hatred openly manifested destroys its chance of revenge.

I do not sacrifice, but lend myself to business.

It is sweet to mingle tears with tears; Griefs, where they wound in solitude, Wound more deeply.

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

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

Good sides to adversity are best admired at a distance.

Fortune can take away riches, but not courage ...

We have been born under a monarchy; to obey God is freedom.

Tis not the belly's hunger that costs so much, but its pride

He who does not want to die should not want to live. For life is tendered to us with the proviso of death. Life is the way to this destination.

Vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together.

Those that are a friend to themselves are sure to be a friend to all.

Trifling trouble find utterance; deeply felt pangs are silent.

Refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear.

Many things have fallen only to rise higher.

That comes too late that comes for the asking.

After death there is nothing.

The mind is a matter over every kind of fortune; itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery.

The chief bond of the soldier is his oath of allegiance and love for the flag.

No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character.

The kind of solace that arises from having company in misery is spiteful.

Fortune's not content with knocking a man down; she sends him spinning head over heels, crash upon crash.

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

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

This life is only a prelude to eternity.

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

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

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

Frugality makes a poor man rich.

You will die not because you're ill, but because you're alive.

Death is a punishment to some, to others a gift and to many a favour.

It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.

No one loves his country for its size or eminence, but because it's his own.

Let him who has granted a favour speak not of it; let him who has received one, proclaim it.

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

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

Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.

Men can be divided into 2 groups: one that goes ahead and achieves something, and one that comes after and criticizes.

Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

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

A good mind is a lord of a kingdom.

When one is friend on himself, also is friend of everybody ...

God has given some gifts to the whole human race, from which no one is excluded.