Seneca The Younger Quotes

It is the practice of the multitude to bark at eminent men, as little dogs do at strangers.

The highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom - that deed and word should be in accord.

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

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.

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

There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing.

Servitude seizes on few, but many seize on her.

No one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and that the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life, although even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. Yet this conviction, clear as it is, needs to be strengthened and given deeper roots through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not a important as keeping the resolutions you have made already.

This is the law of benefits between men; the one ought to forget at once what was given, and the other ought never to forget what he has received.

A crowd of fellow-sufferers is a miserable kind of comfort.

It is safer to offend certain men than it is to oblige them; for as proof that they owe nothing they seek recourse in hatred.

The sovereign good of man is a mind that subjects all things to itself and is itself subject to nothing; such a man's pleasures are modest and reserved, and it may be a question whether he goes to heaven, or heaven comes to him; for a good man is influenced by God Himself, and has a kind of divinity within him.

Those vices [luxury and neglect of decent manners] are vices of men, not of the times.
[Lat., Hominum sunt ista [vitia], non temporum.

You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.

Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.

We are all sinful. Therefore whatever we blame in another we shall find in our own bosoms.

Man is a social animal.

The shortest road to wealth lies in the contempt of wealth.

When once ambition has passed its natural limits, its progress is boundless.

Home joys are blessed of heaven.

He who blushes at riding in a rattletrap, will boast when he rides in style.

The most miserable mortals are they that deliver themselves up to their palates, or to their lusts; the pleasure is short, and turns presently nauseous, and the end of it is either shame or repentance.

A man's ability cannot possibly be of one sort and his soul of another. If his soul be well-ordered, serious and restrained, his ability also is sound and sober. Conversely, when the one degenerates, the other is contaminated.

Haste trips up its own heels, fetters and stops itself.

Hesitation is the best cure for anger. The first blows of anger are heavy, but if it waits, it will think again.

Necessity is stronger than duty.

It is man's duty to live in conformity with the divine will, and this means, firstly, bringing his life into line with 'nature's laws', and secondly, resigning himself completely and uncomplainingly to whatever fate may send him. Only by living thus, and not setting too high a value on things which can at any moment be taken away from him, can he discover that true, unshakeable peace and contentment to which ambition, luxury and above all avarice are among the greatest obstacles.

The expression of truth is simplicity.

Do the best you can ... enjoy the present ... rest satisfied with what you have.

It is rash to condemn where you are ignorant.

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

It is one thing to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to the memory. But to know is to make each thing one's own, not depend on the text and always to look back to the teacher. "Zeno said this, Cleanthes said this." Let there be space between you and the book.

We pardon familiar vices.

Life without the courage for death is slavery.

The arts are the servant; wisdom its master.

Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs.

Luck never made a man wise.

There exists no more difficult art than living.

Anyone can stop a man's life, but no one his death; a thousand doors open on to it.

That which we are not permitted to have we delight in; that which we can have is disregarded.

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.

Life, if thou knowest how to use it, is long enough.

Life is divided into three periods: that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these the present is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain.

A dwarf can stand on a mountain, he's no taller.

He grieves more than is necessary who grieves before any cause for sorrow has arisen.

Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.

He who begs timidly courts a refusal.

It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.

There is more heroism in self-denial than in deeds of arms.

The true felicity of life is to be free from anxieties and pertubations; to understand and do our duties to God and man, and to enjoy the present without any serious dependence on the future.

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

He who is everywhere is nowhere.

Gold is tried by fire, brave men by adversity.

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

I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes ... Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body.

He is ungrateful who denies that he has received a kindness which has been bestowed upon him; he is ungrateful who conceals it; he is ungrateful who makes no return for it; most ungrateful of all is he who forgets it.

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

Never to wrong others takes one a long way towards peace of mind.

Expediency often silences justice.

Bear in mind that you commit a crime by injuring even a wicked brother.

It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.

War I abhor, and yet how sweet The sound along the marching street Of drum and fife, and I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul.

We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.

Money has yet to make anyone rich.

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim.

True joy is a serene and sober motion; and they are miserably out so that take laughing for rejoicing; the seat of it is within, and there is no cheerfulness like the resolutions of a brave mind.

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

An old man at school is a contemptible and ridiculous object.

Nothing costs so much as what is bought by prayers.

Behold a contest worthy of a god, a brave man matched in conflict with adversity.

Life's neither a good nor an evil: it's a field for good and evil.

Religion worships God, while superstition profanes that worship.

All we see and admire today will burn in the universal fire that ushers in a new, just, happy world.

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

Virtue is nothing else than right reason

A favor is to a grateful man delightful always; to an ungrateful man only once.

It is not poverty that we praise, it is the man whom poverty cannot humble or bend.

Four things does a reckless man gain who covets his neighbor's wife - demerit, an uncomfortable bed, thirdly, punishment, and lastly, hell.

Life is short and art is long.

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.

Many person might have achieved wisdom had they not supposed that they already possessed it.

He, who decides a case without hearing the other side, though he decides justly, cannot be considered just.

No crime has been without a precedent.

We are wrong in looking forward to death: in great measure it's past already.

There are many things akin to highest deity that are still obscure. Some may be too subtle for our powers of comprehension, others imperceptible to us because such exalted majesty conceals itself in the holiest part of its sanctuary, forbidding access to any power save that of the spirit. How many heavenly bodies revolve unseen by human eye!

Of all the felicities, the most charming is that of a firm and gentle friendship. It sweetens all our cares, dispels our sorrows, and counsels us in all extremities. Nay, if there were no other comfort in it than the pare exercise of so generous a virtue, even for that single reason a man would not be without it; it is a sovereign antidote against all calamities - even against the fear of death itself.

Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all ...

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.

The world itself is too small for the covetous.

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.

I know that nothing comes to pass but what God appoints; our fate is decreed, and things do not happen by chance, but every man's portion of joy and sorrow is predetermined.

After death there is nothing.

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

God is near you, is with you, is inside you.

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

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.

What should a wise person do when given a blow? Same as Cato when he was attacked; not fire up or revenge the insult., or even return the blow, but simply ignore it.

Every journey has an end.

Nothing is more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to show to prove that he has lived long, except his years.

A great step towards independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.