Seneca. Quotes

Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people - I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own.

The mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply.

It is a small part of life we really live.' Indeed, all the rest is not life but merely time.

Never did I trust Fortune, even when she seemed to be offering peace. All those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me – money, public office, influence – I relegated to a place from which she could take them back without disturbing me. Between them and me, I have kept a wide gap, and so she has merely taken them, not torn them from me.

So the man who restrains himself within the bounds set by nature will not notice poverty; the man who exceeds these bounds will be pursued by poverty however rich he

Let no one,' I say, 'who will make me no worthy return for such a loss rob me of a single day; let my mind be fixed upon itself, let it cultivate itself, let it busy itself with nothing outside, nothing that looks towards an umpire; let it love the tranquillity that is remote from public and private concern.

What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes; since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you; they certainly have not yet come. Accordingly, some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.

If you have nothing to stir you up and rouse you to action, nothing which will test your resolution by its threats and hostilities; if you recline in unshaken comfort, it is not tranquillity; it is merely a flat calm.

Providence which could be spoken of, almost according to choice or context, under a variety of names or descriptions including the divine reason, creative reason, nature,

What then is good? The knowledge of things. What is evil? The lack of knowledge of things.

Compra solamente lo necesario, no lo conveniete. Lo innecesario, aunque cueste un solo centimo, es caro.

Buy only what is necessary, not what is convenient. What is unnecessary, even if it only costs one cent, is expensive.

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 a fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient; and looking upon them only as sick and extravagant.

Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.

From this state also will he flee. If I should attempt to enumerate them one by one, I should not find a single one which could tolerate the wise man or which the wise man could tolerate.

When we have done everything within our power, we shall possess a great deal: but we once possessed the world.

Life is divided into three parts: what was, what is and what shall be. Of these three periods, the present is short, the future is doubtful and the past alone is certain.

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

Who can doubt, my dear Lucilius, that life is the gift of the immortal gods, but that living well1 is the gift of philosophy?

Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

How many are quite unworthy to see the light, and yet the day dawns.

Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate.

Nothing satisfies greed, but even a little satisfies nature.

We do not need many words, but, rather, effective words.

To be everywhere, is to be no where at all

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

What mental darkness, what ignorance of the truth blinds those who, though afflicted by the fear of poverty, yet take pleasure in imitating it!

An unpopular rule is never long maintained.

If i had not been admitted to these studies it would not have been worth while to have been born.

One can expect an agreement between philosophers sooner than between clocks.

The day will come when studies pursued over many centuries will reveal in all clarity things that are now hidden, and posterity will be astonished that we had failed to grasp these truths.

If we do not want to be overwhelmed and struck numb by rare events as if they were unprecedented ones; fortune needs envisaging in a thoroughly comprehensive way.

No one is the object of another man's contempt, unless he is first the object of his own.

Those who forget the past, ignore the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and filled with anxiety: when they come to face death, the wretches understand too late that for such a long time they have busied themselves in doing nothing.

Although the sum and substance of the happy life is unalloyed freedom from care, and though the secret of such freedom is unshaken confidence ... men gather together that which causes worry.

So the spirit must be trained to a realization and an acceptance of its lot. It must come to
see that there is nothing fortune will shrink from[.]
There's no ground for resentment in all this. We've entered into a world in which these are the terms life is lived on – if you're satisfied with that, submit to them, if you're not, get out, whatever way you please.

Vices have to be crushed rather than picked at.

I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.

Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

For love of bustle is not industry, - it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind.

In truth, Serenus, I have for a long time been silently asking myself to what I should liken such a condition of mind, and I can find nothing that so closely approaches it as the state of those who, after being released from a long and serious illness, are sometimes touched with fits of fever and slight disorders, and, freed from the last traces of them, are nevertheless disquieted with mistrust, and, though now quite well, stretch out their wrist to a physician and complain unjustly of any trace of heat in their body. It is not, Serenus, that these are not quite well in body, but that they are not quite used to being well; just as even a tranquil sea will show some ripple, particularly when it has just subsided after a storm. What you need, therefore, is not any of those harsher measures which we have already left behind, the necessity of opposing yourself at this point, of being angry with yourself at that, of sternly urging yourself on at another, but that which comes last -confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the right path, and have not been led astray by the many cross- tracks of those who are roaming in every direction, some of whom are wandering very near the path itself. But what you desire is something great and supreme and very near to being a god - to be unshaken.

No man is despised by another unless he is first despised by himself.

It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity.

You must reflect that fettered prisoners only at first feel the weight of the shackles on their legs: in time, when they have decided not to struggle against but to bear them, they learn from necessity to endure with fortitude, and from habit to endure with ease.

Be deaf to those who love you most of all; they pray for bad things with good intentions.

Judge a man after they have made him their friend, instead of making him their friend after they have judged him. Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself.

O how many noble deeds of women are lost in obscurity!

7. Do you ask me what this real good is, and whence it derives? I will tell you: it comes from a good conscience, from honourable purposes, from right actions, from contempt of the gifts of chance, from an even and calm way of living which treads but one path. For

So it is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil.

The shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth.

The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject ... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them ... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.

the other vices seize individuals, this is the one passion that sometimes takes hold of an entire state. Never has an entire people burned with love for a woman, no state in its entirety has placed its hope in money or profit; ambition seizes men one by one on a personal basis, lack of self-restraint does not afflict a whole people; often they rush to anger in one mass.

Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement.

The preoccupied become aware of it only when it is over.

Why do you voluntarily deceive yourself and require to be told now for the first time what fate it is that you have long been labouring under? Take my word for it: since the day you were born you are being led thither.

One hand washes the other.
(Manus Manum Lavat)

To want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperance. Apart from which this kind of obsession with the liberal arts turns people into pedantic, irritating, tactless, self-satisfied bores, not learning what they need simply because they spend their time learning things they will never need. The scholar Didymus wrote four thousand works: I should feel sorry him if he had merely read so many useless works.

A man is as much a fool for shedding tears because he isn't going to be alive a thousand years from now.

If you wish to be loved, love.

There is no genius without a touch of madness.

For men cease to possess all things the moment they desire all things for their own.

It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

In times of happiness, no point in shaking things up.
But in a time of crisis, the safest thing is change.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality

He will live ill who does not know how to die well

To be everywhere is to be nowhere.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it, or believes that living through many consulships is a great blessing. 5. Rehearse this thought every day, that you may be able to depart from life contentedly; for many men clutch and cling to life, even as those who are carried down a rushing stream clutch and cling to briars and sharp rocks.

What is freedom, you ask? It means not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it

The only really leisured people are those who devote time to acquiring true knowledge rather than trivia.

It's easier to get philosophers to agree than clocks.

The busy man is busy with everything except living; there is nothing that is more difficult to learn how to do right.

The best compromise between love and good sense is both to feel longing and to conquer it.

Regard [a friend] as loyal, and you will make him loyal.

For that is the people's verdict, but wise men on the whole reject the people's decrees.

Wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use,

All things were ready for us at our birth; it is we that have made everything difficult for ourselves, through our disdain for what is easy.

One of the causes of the troubles that beset us is the way our lives are guided by the example of others; instead of being set to rights by reason we're seduced by convention.

And there's no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed.

So let those people go on weeping and wailing whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity, let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries; but let those who have spent all their years suffering disasters endure the worst afflictions with a brave and resolute staunchness. Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing, that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts.

What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then?

But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. Devote yourself entirely to her. You're worthy of her, she's worthy of you-fall into each other's arms. Say a firm, plain no to every other occupation.

The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but
we have been a long time on the way.

Injustice never rules forever

Since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it.

Let us take pleasure in what we have received and make no comparison; no man will ever be happy if tortured by the greater happiness of another.

Lat, urbes constituit aetas: hora dissolvit: momento fit cinis: diu sylva.
An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them. In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.

Shall I tell you what philosophy holds out to humanity? Counsel.

Could anything be more stupid than to praise a person for something that is not his? Or more crazy than admiring things which in a single moment can be transferred to another?

The highest good is a mind that scorns the happenings of chance, and rejoices only in virtue.

Happy is the man who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts!

But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking with other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible. For conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor. Nobody will keep the things he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more. Neither will anyone who has failed to keep a story to himself keep the name of his informant to himself. Every person without exception has someone to whom he confides everything that is confided to himself. Even supposing he puts some guard in his garrulous tongue and is content with a single pair of ears, he will still be the creator of a host of later listeners – such is the way in which what was but a little while before a secret becomes common rumor.

Preserve a sense of proportion in your attitude to everything that pleases you, and make the most of them while they are at their best.

For some persons the remedy should be merely prescribed; in the case of others, it should be forced down their throats.

You should rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile duties who wish to have daily as their closest friends Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be too busy to see you, none of these will not send his visitor away happier and more devoted to himself, none of these will allow anyone to depart empty-handed. They are at home to all mortals by night and by day.

Who scorns his own life is lord of yours.

Ignorance is no cure for suffering.

Time heals what reason cannot.

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

Virtue is according to nature; vice is opposed to it and hostile.

Therefore whenever his last day comes, the wise man will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step.