Seneca Quotes

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Life without the Courage for death is slavery

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We are mad, not only individually but nationally. We check
manslaughter and isolated murders, but what of war and the much-vaunted
crime of slaughtering whole peoples?

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If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then
adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common
occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in
an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds
navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.

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Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

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When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having
many acquaintances, but no friends.

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The happy life is a life that is in harmony with its own nature.

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No good thing renders its possessor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss; nothing, however, is lost with less discomfort than that which, when lost, cannot be missed.

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

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The day which we fear is our last is the birthday of eternity.

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The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.

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What really ruins our character is the fact that none of us looks back over his life.

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Ignorance is the cause of fear.

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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.

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

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Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

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

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A woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body.

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The part of life we really live is small.’ For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

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Thus ever from himself doth each man flee.’ But
what does he gain if he does not escape from himself? He ever follows
himself and weighs upon himself as his own most burdensome companion. And
so we ought to understand that what we struggle with is the fault, not of
the places, but of ourselves.

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All cruelty springs from weakness.

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Gold melts with fire, woman with gold, man with woman.

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

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That you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they ought, some before they ought and some which ought never to torture us at all. We heighten our pain either by presupposing a cause or anticipation.

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Associate with people who are likely to improve you.

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If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.

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The sun also shines on the wicked.

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What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed, Whatever years be behind us are in death’s hands.

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Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement.

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It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

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Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.

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To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has
never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.

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You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

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All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time
should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain
prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the
prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers. For
everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it
rises, the more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed to perish
brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely
short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must
work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with
anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of
time that will never more return.

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Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms, you’ll be able to use them
better when you’re older.

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Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.

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The best ideas are common property.

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We are members of one great body, planted by nature

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At times we ought to drink even to intoxication, not so as to drown, but merely to dip ourselves in wine, for wine washes away troubles and dislodges them from the depths of the mind and acts as a remedy to sorrow as it does to some diseases . The inventor of wine is called Liber, not from the license which he gives to our tongues but because he liberates the mind from the bondage of cares and emancipates it, animates it and renders it more daring in all that it attempts

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No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best.

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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.

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What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.

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Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

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One hand washes the other.