Seneca Time Quotes & Sayings

Time is the one thing that is given to everyone in equal measure. — Seneca The Younger

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? — Seneca.

A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them. — Seneca The Younger

Time heals what reason cannot. — Seneca.

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. — Seneca.

Time is the greatest remedy for anger. — Seneca The Younger

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. — Seneca The Younger

You will find no one willing to share out his money; but to how many does each of us divide up his life! People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy. — Seneca.

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. — Seneca.

We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do: we are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would no end of them.- On the Right Use of Time — Joseph Addison

Ab honesto virum bonum nihil deterret. (Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable.)-A Wrinkle in Time — Seneca.

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.

If you are bent on assuming a pose and never reveal yourself to anyone frankly, in the fashion of many who live a false life that is all made up for show; for it is torturous to be constantly watching oneself and be fearful of being caught out of our usual role. And we are never free from concern if we think that every time anyone looks at us he is always taking-our measure; for many things happen that strip off our pretence against our will, and, though all this attention to self is successful, yet the life of those who live under a mask cannot be happy and without anxiety. — Seneca The Younger

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them. — Seneca The Younger

The declaration of love may come sooner than expected. Take time before you reciprocate as this may simply be a statement of what they expect from you. — Seneca The Younger

Believe me, it is the sign of a great man, and one who is above human error, not to allow his time to be frittered away: he has the longest possible life simply because whatever time was available he devoted entirely to himself. — Seneca.

In my own time there have been inventions of this sort, transparent windows tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building short-hand, which has been carried to such a perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is drudgery for the lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul. — Seneca The Younger

Nullum ad nocendum tempus angustum est malis.
No time is too short for the wicked to injure their neighbors. — Seneca The Younger

This body is not a home, but an inn; and that only for a short time. — Seneca The Younger

If God adds another day to our life, let us receive it gladly. — Seneca The Younger

Apparently, when the arrogant King of Persia beheld the vastness of his troops spread out across boundless plains, he shed copious tears when he realized that not one man amongst his prodigious army would be alive in a hundred years' time. — Seneca.

Nothing is our except time. — Seneca The Elder

There is nothing that we can properly call our own but our time, and yet everybody fools us out of it who has a mind to do it. If a man borrows a paltry sum of money, there must needs be bonds and securities, and every common civility is presently charged upon account. But he who has my time thinks he owes me nothing for it, though it be a debt that gratitude itself can never repay. — Seneca The Younger

These we should refuse to buy, if we were compelled to give in payment for them our houses or some attractive and profitable estate; but we are eager to attain them at the cost of anxiety, of danger, and of lost honour, personal freedom, and time; so true it is that each man regards nothing as cheaper than himself. — Seneca.

As for old age, embrace and love it. It abounds with pleasure if you know how to use it. The gradually declining years are among the sweetest in a man's life, and I maintain that, even when they have reached the extreme limit, they have their pleasure still. — Seneca The Younger

Men love their vices and hate them at the same time. — Seneca The Younger

Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at. — Seneca.

An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them. — Seneca The Younger

You cannot, I repeat, successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time. — Seneca The Younger

It's not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. -Lucius Annaeus Seneca — Seneca.

Time hath often cured the wound which reason failed to heal. — Seneca The Younger

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

Why are you idle? If you don't grasp it first, it flees.' And even if you do grasp it, it will still flee. 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. In — Seneca.

Honours, monuments, whatever the ambitious have ordered by decrees or raised in public buildings are soon destroyed: there is nothing that the passage of time does not demolish and remove. — Seneca.

Nothing is ours, except time. — Seneca.

It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and
what will perhaps make you wonder more
it takes the whole of life to learn how to die. — Seneca.

The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing. — Seneca.

No one dies except on his own day. You are throwing away none of your own time; for what you leave behind does not belong to you. — Seneca.

I guess this is a bad time to mention I hung a dummy and painted Seneca Crane's name on it ... — Suzanne Collins

Those who wish their virtue to be advertised are not striving for virtue but for renown. Are you not willing to be just without being renowned? Nay, indeed you must often be just and be at the same time disgraced. And then, if you are wise, let ill repute, well won, be a delight. Farewell. — Seneca.

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. — Seneca.

It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself for difficult times; while fortune is bestowing favors on it is then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs. — Seneca.

The most imperious masters over their own servants are at the same time the most abject slaves to the servants of others. — Seneca The Younger

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

Plato says: "Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave has had kings among his ancestors." The flight of time, with its vicissitudes, has jumbled all such things together, and Fortune has turned them upside down. Then — Seneca.

We sought therefore to amend our will, and not to suffer it through despite to languish long time in error. — Seneca The Younger

I think Seneca is right: life feels longer the more you engage with it ... I should be loving sculpture! But I have not gone deeply into sculpture. Instead, having been utterly insensitive to sculpture, I fill the time that might have been usefully devoted to sculpture with things like drinking and staring into space. — Zadie Smith

All that remains of our existence is not actually life but merely time. — Seneca.

When the lamp has been removed from my sight, and my wife, no stranger now to my habit, has fallen silent, I examine the whole of my day and retrace my actions and words; I hide nothing from myself, pass over nothing. For why should I be afraid of any of my mistakes, when I can say: 'Beware of doing that again, and this time I pardon you. — Seneca.

Counting even yesterday, all past time is lost time; the very day which we are now spending is shared between ourselves and death. It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that which previously has flowed out; similarly, the final hour when we cease to exist does not of 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. 21. — Seneca.

Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow. — Seneca.

Time discovers truth. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The trip doesn't exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears ... so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea. Does it surprise you that running away doesn't do you any good? The things you're running away from are with you all the time. — Seneca.

The swiftness of time is infinite, as is still more evident when we look back on the past. — Seneca The Younger

No time is too short for criminals to do wrong. — Seneca.

It is not that we have a short time to live but that we waste a lot of it. — Seneca.

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. — Seneca.

The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty. — Seneca.

Throw aside all hindrances and give up your time to attaining a sound mind — Seneca.

When some state or other offered Alexander a part of its territory and half of all its property he told them that 'he hadn't come to Asia with the intention of accepting whatever they cared to give him, but of letting them keep whatever he chose to leave them.' Philosophy, likewise, tells all other occupations: 'It's not my intention to accept whatever time is leftover from you; you shall have, instead, what I reject.' Give your whole mind to her. — Seneca The Younger

They live ill who are always beginning to live. 10. You are right in asking why; the saying certainly stands in need of a commentary. It is because the life of such persons is always incomplete. But a man cannot stand prepared for the approach of death if he has just begun to live. We must make it our aim already to have lived long enough. No one deems that he has done so, if he is just on the point of planning his life. 11. You need not think that there are few of this kind; practically everyone is of such a stamp. Some men, indeed, only begin to live when it is time for them to leave off living. And if this seems surprising to you, I shall add that which will surprise you still more: Some men have left off living before they have begun. Farewell. — Seneca.

Whatever can happen at any time can happen today. — Seneca.

It would be superfluous to mention more who, though others deemed them the happiest of men, have expressed their loathing for every act of their years, and with their own lips have given true testimony against themselves; but by these complaints they changed neither themselves nor others. For when they have vented their feelings in words, they fall back into their usual round. Heaven knows! such lives as yours, though they should pass the limit of a thousand years, will shrink into the merest span; your vices will swallow up any amount of time. The space you have, which reason can prolong, although it naturally hurries away, of necessity escapes from you quickly; for you do not seize it, you neither hold it back, nor impose delay upon the swiftest thing in the world, but you allow it to slip away as if it were something superfluous and that could be replaced. — Seneca.

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.

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.

Since nature allows us to enter into a partnership with every age, why not turn from this brief and transient spell of time and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the past, which is limitless and eternal and can be shared with better men than we? — Seneca.

Only time can heal what reason cannot. — Seneca.

Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. — Seneca.

None of it lay fallow and neglected, none of it under another's control; for being an extremely thrifty guardian of his time he never found anything for which it was worth exchanging. So he had enough time; but those into whose lives the public have made great inroads inevitably have too little. — Seneca.

There is this blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has exits innumerable, and as I choose the house in which I live, the ship in which I will sail, so will I choose the time and manner of my death. — Seneca The Younger

But it is one thing to remember, another to know. Remembering is merely safeguarding something entrusted to the memory; knowing, however, means making everything your own; it means not depending upon the copy and not all the time glancing back at the master. — Seneca.

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

Thus the time we are given is not brief, but we make it so. We do not lack time; on the contrary, there is so much of it that we waste an awful lot. — Seneca.

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.

Unless we are complete ingrates, the lives of all those men that preceded us should be seen as sacred. Their collective existence paved the way for our own time on Earth. Because — Seneca.

The man who fears death will never do anything worthy of a man who is alive; but he who knows that these were the conditions drawn up for him when he was conceived will live according to this rule and at the same time, through the same strength of mind, he will ensure that none of what happens to him will come unexpectedly. — Seneca.

Time flies on fickle wings — Seneca.

So the life of the 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. Some time has passed: he grasps it in his recollection. Time is present: he uses it. Time is to come: he anticipates it. This combination of all times into one gives him a long life. — Seneca.

Why do you wait," asks he. "Why are you idle? If you don't seize the day, it escapes." Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore you must compete with time's haste in the speed of using it, and, like a gush of water that blasts past and will not always flow calmly, you must drink fast. — Seneca.

The time of the actual enjoyment is short and swift, and made much shorter through their own fault. For they dash from one pleasure to another and cannot stay steady in one desire. — Seneca.

We are indeed apt to ascribe certain faults to the place or to the time; but those faults will follow us, no matter how we change our place. — Seneca.

A man who has taken your time recognises no debt; yet it is the one he can never repay. — Seneca The Younger

It's not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it. — Seneca.

Most human beings, Paulinus, complain about the meanness of nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, and because this spell of time that has been given to us rushes by so swiftly and rapidly that with very few exceptions life ceases for the rest of us just when we are getting ready for it. — Seneca.

Philosophy calls for plain living, but not for penance; and we may perfectly well be plain and neat at the same time. This is the mean of which I approve; our life should observe a happy medium between the ways of a sage and the ways of the world at large; all men should admire it, but they should understand it also. "Well — Seneca.

I never spend a day in idleness; I appropriate even a part of the night for study. I do not allow time for sleep but yield to it when I must, and when my eyes are wearied with waking and ready to fall shut, I keep them at their task. — Seneca.

Let me therefore live as if every moment were to be my last. — Seneca The Younger

He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man. But he who knows that this was the condition laid down for him at the moment of his conception will live on those terms, and at the same time he will guarantee with a similar strength of mind that no events take him by surprise. — Seneca.

Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner. 3. Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction. — Seneca.

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. — Seneca The Younger

You live as if you will live forever, no care for your mortality ever enters your head, you pay no mind to how much time has already gone by. You waste time as if it was a limitless resource, when any moment you spend on someone else or some matter is potentially your last. — Seneca.

Write something therefore in a simple style, merely to pass the time, for your own use, and not for publication. Less labour is needed when one does not look beyond the present." Then — Seneca.

The deep waters of time will flow over us: only a few men of genius will lift a head above the surface, and though doomed eventually to pass into the same silence, will fight against oblivion and for a long time hold their own. — Seneca The Younger

Where reason fails, time oft has worked a cure. — Seneca The Younger

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

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.

We haven't time to spare to hear whether it was between Italy and Sicily that he ran into a storm or somewhere outside the world we know-when every day we're running into our own storms, spiritual storms, and driven by vice into all the troubles that Ulysses ever knew. — Seneca The Younger

The day has already begun to lessen. It has shrunk considerably, but yet will still allow a goodly space of time if one rises, so to speak, with the day itself. We are more industrious, and we are better men if we anticipate the day and welcome the dawn; — Seneca.

Verbal virtuosities or the gratuitous expense of time or money that is presupposed by material or symbolic appropriation of works of art, or even, at the second power, the self-imposed constraints and restrictions which make up the "asceticism of the privileged" (as Marx said of Seneca) and the refusal of the facile which is the basis of all "pure" aesthetics, are so many repetition of that variant of the master-slave dialectic through which the possessors affirm their possession of their possessions. In so doing, they distance themselves still further from the dispossessed, who, not content with being slaves to necessity in all its forms, are suspected of being possessed by the desire for possession, and so potentially possessed by the possessions they do not, or do not yet, possess. — Pierre Bourdieu

For all of us, the time is short and the span of life is brief On top of that, our real human problem, the Stoic philosopher Seneca said in a direct rebuke to the modern illusion, is not just that life is short but that we waste so much of it-so that life ceases for us "just when we are getting ready for it."35
But — Os Guinness