Seneca Happiness Quotes & Sayings

Every one has time if he likes. Business runs after nobody: people cling to it of their own free will and think that to be busy is a proof of happiness. — Seneca The Younger

Out of all the actors I have worked with, I love working with Larry Hagman the most. We were very close and it was just a wonderful time. — Barbara Eden

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not. — Seneca.

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

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

Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth, but where is there any mirth in our time, and do people know how to be mirthful? ... A man's mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone's character won't be cracked for a long time then the man bursts out laughing somehow quite sincerely, and his whole character suddenly opens up as if on the flat of your hand. Only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and goodheartedly. I'm not speaking of his mental development, but of his character, of the whole man. And so, if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how we weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs. If a man has a good laugh, it means he's a good man. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You love him. You are holy-shit in love with him. — Andrea Randall

It is better to be tied to any thorny bush than to be with a cross man. — Lady Gregory

Philosophy takes as her aim the state of happiness ... she shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. She strips men's minds of empty thinking, bestows a greatness that is solid and administers a check to greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show; she sees that we are left no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated. — Seneca The Younger

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.

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

Your greatest difficulty is with yourself; for you are your own stumbling-block. You do not know what you want. You are better at approving the right course than at following it out. You see where the true happiness lies, but you have not the courage to attain it. — Seneca.

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.

You can point to the alleged miracles of the Bible, or any other religious text, but they are nothing but old stories fabricated by man and then exaggerated over time. — Dan Brown

Learn how to feel joy. — Seneca The Younger

It is part of the cure to wish to be cured. — Seneca The Younger

Why repeat the old errors, if there are so many new errors to commit? — Bertrand Russell

We are born under circumstances that would be favorable if we did not abandon them. It was nature's intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can make himself happy. — Seneca.

For the only safe harbour in this life's tossing, troubled sea is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring and to stand ready and confident, squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever fortune hurls at us. — Seneca.

Whatever is to make us better and happy God has placed either openly before us or close to us. — Seneca The Younger

9 We praise our D Lord and Father with it, and we curse men who are made in God's likeness with it. — Anonymous

I won't say if I'm single or dating or married or divorced. There's boundaries. — Tyra Banks

We've had many times when a judge makes decisions that are inaccurate, and that's why we have an appeal processes — Bernard C. Parks

Humanity is fortunate, because no man is unhappy except by his own fault. — Seneca The Younger

They Whatever can make life truly happy is absolutely good in its own right because it cannot be warped into evil From whence then comes error In that while all men wish for a happy life they mistake the means for the thing itself and while they fancy themselves in pursuit of it they are flying from it for when the sum of happiness consists in solid tranquillity and an unembarrassed confidence therein they are ever collecting causes of disquiet and not only carry burthens but drag them painfully along through the rugged and deceitful path of life so that they still withdraw themselves from the good effect proposed the more pains they take the more business they have upon their hands instead of advancing they are retrograde and as it happens in a labyrinth their very speed puzzles and confounds them — Seneca.

I prefer to not say anything, she wrote, there's no point adding to the pain, or adding our own little mysteries to it. As if the pain itself were not enough of a mystery, as if the pain were not the (mysterious) answer to all mysteries. — Roberto Bolano

Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power. — Seneca The Younger

Where fear is, happiness is not. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Every person has a life mission to fulfill. Never attempt to destroy what God has put in another person to do. You don't know God's plans, but Satan will most certainly use you to stop his plans. — Shannon L. Alder

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

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

Where, then, lies the mistake, since all men crave the happy life? It is that they regard the means for producing happiness as happiness itself, and, while seeking happiness, they are really fleeing from it. For — Seneca.

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. — Seneca The Younger

Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present. — Seneca.

A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness. — Seneca The Younger

A story is a story is a story. The only difference is in the techniques you bring to bear. There are always limitations on what you can and can't do. But I enjoy that. Just like when you write a sonnet or haiku, there are rules you have to abide by. And to me, playing within the rules is the fun part. It keeps the brain fresh. — J. Michael Straczynski

When a sinful person meets the holy God in Christ, what he hears is Yes. God, do you love me? Yes. Will you forgive me? Yes. Will you accept me? Yes. Will you help me change? Yes. Will you give me power to serve you? Yes. Will you keep me? Yes. Will you show me your glory? Yes. — John Piper

True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence on the future; not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient. — Seneca.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
- Seneca — Seneca.

Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations. — Christian Nestell Bovee

For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys. — Seneca.