Famous Quotes & Sayings

Seneca. Quotes & Sayings

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Famous Quotes By Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 787973

There is no need to complain of particular grievances, for life in its entirety is lamentable. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1521458

You must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish, and avoid those which get bigger as you proceed and do not cease where you had intended. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1934550

Will you not understand that no man should be tormented by the future? The man who has been told that he will have to endure torture fifty years from now is not disturbed thereby, unless he has leaped over the intervening years, and has projected himself into the trouble that is destined to arrive a generation later. In the same way, souls that enjoy being sick and that seize upon excuses for sorrow are saddened by events long past and effaced from the records. Past and future are both absent; we feel neither of them. But there can be no pain except as the result of what you feel. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 757352

You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1575381

You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1861843

If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich. 8. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 94512

No one," he says, "leaves this world in a different manner from one who has just been born." That is not true; for we are worse when we die than when we were born; but it is our fault, and not that of Nature. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 829929

For to be afflicted with endless sorrow at the loss of someone very dear is foolish self-indulgence, and to feel none is inhuman callousness. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 261195

Thus far, you have indeed not been sluggish, but you must quicken your pace. Much toil remains; to confront it, you must yourself lavish all your waking hours, and all your efforts, if you wish the result to be accomplished. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1260436

How can you think that anything will not happen, when you know that it may happen to many men, and has happened to many? That is a noble verse, and worthy of a nobler source than the stage: - "What one hath suffered may befall us all." That man has lost his children: you may lose yours. That man has been convicted: your innocence is in peril. We are deceived and weakened by this delusion, when we suffer what we never foresaw that we possibly could suffer: but by looking forward to the coming of our sorrows we take the sting out of them when they come. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1136405

I will storm the gods, and shake the universe. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 905837

It is wrong to live under constraint; but no man is constrained to live under constraint. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1620318

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 293637

To be everywhere is to be nowhere. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1658935

One hand washes the other.
(Manus Manum Lavat) — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 760247

There is only one relief for great sufferings, and that is to endure and surrender to their compulsion. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 621028

The man who spends all his time on his own needs, who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 2002744

They lose the day in waiting for the night, and the night in fearing the dawn. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 147895

Why be concerned about others, come to that, when you've outdone your own self? Set yourself a limit which you couldn't even exceed if you wanted to, and say good-bye at last to those deceptive prizes more precious to those who hope for them than to those who have won them. If there were anything substantial in them they would sooner or later bring a sense of fullness; as it is they simply aggravate the thirst of those who swallow them. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 657672

Nature's needs are easily provided and ready to hand. 11. It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, - the superfluous things that wear our togas threadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores. That which is enough is ready to our hands. He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich. Farewell. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1940269

What is death? Either a transition or an end. I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 276615

So the life of a philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundary as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 764985

Why of your own accord postpone your real life to the distant future? Shall you wait for some interest to fall due, or for some income on your merchandise, or for a place in the will of some wealthy old man, when you can be rich here and now. Wisdom offers wealth in ready money, and pays it over to those in whose eyes she has made wealth superfluous. These — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1491441

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. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 2257882

The wise man, he said, lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas 'the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lack everything. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1909223

Of all men only those who find time for philosophy are at leisure, only they are truly alive; for it is not only their own lifetime they guard well; they add every age to their own; all the years that have passed before them they requisition for their store. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 2038972

If you wish to be loved, love. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1324981

We must indulge the mind and from time to time allow it the leisure which is its food and strength. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 2138178

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1500408

We live among wicked man through our own wickedness. One thing alone can bring us peace, an agreement to treat one another with kindness. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 2157983

Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall always pray for leisure, but never enjoy it. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 2176697

Any man,' he says, 'who does not think that what he has is more than ample, is an unhappy man, even if he is the master of the whole world. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1429035

To expect punishment is to suffer it; and to earn it is to expect it. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1428471

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. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1349657

Men whose spirit has grown arrogant from the great favor of fortune have this most serious fault - those whom they have injured they also hate. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1402395

Consider the whole world reconnoitre individuals j who is there whose life is not taken up with providing for to morrow Do you ask what harm there is in this An infinite deal for such men do not live but are about to live they defer every thing from day to day however circumspect we are life will still outrun us. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1402206

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

Seneca. Quotes 1399090

Mankind is perpetually the victim of a pointless and futile martydom, fretting life away in fruitless worries though failure to realise what limit is set to acquisition and to the growth of genuine pleasure — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1353967

And so when you see a man often wearing the robe of office, when you see one whose name is famous in the Forum, do not envy him; those things are bought at the price of life. They will waste all their years, in order that they may have one year reckoned by their name. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1657456

Do you ask what is the foundation of a sound mind? It is, not to find joy in useless things. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1884204

It is sweet to draw the world down with you when you are perishing. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1866118

It is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1798418

To what lengths would so precocious an ambition not go? — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1792541

If he lose a hand through disease or war, or if some accident puts out one or both of his eyes, he will be satisfied with what is left, taking as much pleasure in his impaired and maimed body as he took when it was sound. But while he does not pine for these parts if they are missing, he prefers not to lose them. 5. In this sense the wise man is self-sufficient, that he can do without friends, not that he desires to do without them. When I say "can," I mean this: he endures the loss of a friend with equanimity. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1739936

Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1703709

Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1697560

If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1679871

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? — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1671192

No man is so faint-hearted that he would rather hang in suspense for ever than drop once for all. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1540847

Never will there be a shortage of reasons for anxiety, whether born of happiness or misery; life will press on its way from one pursuit to another; leisure will never be enjoyed, though the prayer is constantly on our lips. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1652552

Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1012048

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1588974

Those who choose to have no real purpose in life are ever rootless and dissatisfied, tossed by their aimlessness into ever-changing situations. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1586206

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

Seneca. Quotes 1580763

Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1980363

If you gain from a crime, you did it. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1553805

But for those whose life is far removed from all business it must be amply long. None of it is frittered away, none of it scattered here and there, none of it committed to fortune, none of it lost through carelessness, none of it wasted on largesse, none of it superfluous: the whole of it, so to speak, is well invested. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1550639

But the man who is not puffed up in good times does not collapse either when they change. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 226056

Prove - and an easy task it is - that so-called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments ... — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 463496

There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 458734

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, — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 424434

Night brings our troubles to the light rather than banishes them. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 419803

... because it is natural to touch more often the parts that hurt. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 352089

Whereas we believe lightning to be released as a result of the collision of clouds, they believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning: for as they attribute all to deity, they are led to believe not that things have a meaning insofar as they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have a meaning. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 333182

Many pursue no fixed goal, but are tossed about in ever-changing designs by a fickleness which is shifting, inconstant and never satisfied with itself. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 316621

So you must match time's swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 306065

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

Seneca. Quotes 304987

I think the pinnacle of misfortune is to be forced by chance to want things one should loathe. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 280734

Men are tight-fisted in keeping control of their fortunes, but when it comes to the matter of wasting time, they are positively extravagant in the one area where there is honour in being miserly. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 486018

Love of bustle is not industry. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 219535

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. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 217148

He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 198428

We should every night call ourselves to an account;
What infirmity have I mastered today?
What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 192111

He who is brave is free — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 179322

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

Seneca. Quotes 158894

The minds of the preoccupied, as if harnessed in a yoke, cannot turn round and look behind them. So their lives vanish into an abyss; and just as it is no use pouring any amount of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch and hold it, so it does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 152179

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

Seneca. Quotes 95866

Your ears are not simply for hearing tuneful sounds, mellow and sweetly played in harmony: you should also listen to laughter and weeping, to words flattering and acrimonious, to merriment and distress, to the language of men and to the roars and barking of animals. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 92653

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

Seneca. Quotes 657409

And what is more wretched than a man who forgets his benefits and clings to his injuries? — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1230365

To be everywhere, is to be no where at all — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1132561

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 — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1077065

There is no favorable wind for the sailor who doesn't know where to go — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1076830

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

Seneca. Quotes 80297

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. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 865976

Think your way through difficulties: harsh conditions can be softened, restricted ones can be widened, and heavy ones can weigh less on those who know how to bear them. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 865866

We must go for walks out of doors, so that the mind can be strengthened and invigorated by a clear sky and plenty of fresh air. At times it will acquire fresh energy from a journey by carriage and a change of scene, or from socializing and drinking freely. Occasionally we should even come to the point of intoxication, sinking into drink but not being totally flooded by it; for it does wash away cares, and stirs the mind to its depths, and heals sorrow just as it heals certain diseases. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 858077

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

Seneca. Quotes 795677

And what's so bad about your being deprived of that? ... All things seem unbearable to people who have become spoilt, who have become soft through a life of luxury, ailing more in the mind than they ever are in the body. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 697939

They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 1239342

All the greatest blessings create anxiety, and Fortune is never less to be trusted than when it is fairest. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 620089

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 613598

Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 559872

You may say; "What then? If yonder man, rich by base means, and yonder man, lord of many but slave of more, shall call themselves happy, will their own opinion make them happy?" It matters not what one says, but what one feels; also, not how one feels on one particular day, but how one feels at all times. There is no reason, however, why you should fear that this great privilege will fall into unworthy hands; only the wise man is pleased with his own. Folly is ever troubled with weariness of itself. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 555339

I've come across people who say that there is a sort of inborn restlessness in the human spirit and an urge to change one's abode; for man is endowed with a mind which is changeable and and unsettled: nowhere at rest, it darts about and directs its thoughts to all places known and unknown, a wanderer which cannot endure repose and delights chiefly in novelty. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 539231

If you wish Pythocles to have pleasure for ever, do not add to his pleasures, but subtract from his desires; — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 530238

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

Seneca. Quotes 522605

People are delighted to accept pensions and gratuities, for which they hire out their labour or their support or their services. But nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But if death threatens these same people, you will see them praying to their doctors; if they are in fear of capital punishment, you will see them prepared to spend their all to stay alive. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 520075

Light griefs are loquacious. Great ones are dumb. — Seneca.

Seneca. Quotes 499263

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. — Seneca.