Seneca's Quotes & Sayings

The place one's in, though, doesn't make any contribution to peace of mind: it's the spirit that makes everything agreeable to oneself. — Seneca The Younger

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

Not to feel one's misfortunes is not human, not to bear them is not manly. — Seneca The Younger

Not a soul takes thought how well he may live- only how long: yet a good life might be everybody's, a long one can be nobody's. — Seneca The Younger

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

Ubicumque ex aequo ad caelum erigitur acies, paribus intervallis omnia divina ab omnibus humanis distant - From whatever point on the earth's surface you look up to heaven the same distance lies between the realms of gods and men — Seneca.

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. — Seneca The Younger

Why, Sir, when I have anything to invent, I never trouble my head about it, as other men do; but presently turn over this Book, and there I have, at one view, all that Perseus , Montaigne , Seneca 's Tragedies , Horace , Juvenal , Claudian, Pliny , Plutarch 's lives , and the rest, have ever thought upon this subject: and so, in a trice, by leaving out a few words, or putting in others of my own, the business is done. — Theresa Villiers

Light griefs do speak, while sorrow's tongue is bound. — Seneca The Younger

A man's peace of mind does not depend upon Fortune; for, even when angry she grants enough for our needs. — Seneca.

I can show you a philtre, compounded without drugs, herbs, or any witch's incantation: 'If you want to be loved, love. — Seneca.

We must limit the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about houses, theatres, and marketplaces. They mind other men's business, and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, "Whither are you going?" he will answer, "By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall see some people and do something." They wander purposelessly seeking for something to do, and do, not what they have made up their minds to do, but what has casually fallen in their way. They move uselessly and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining anything. Many men spend their lives in exactly the same fashion, which one may call a state of restless indolence. — Seneca.

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.

Tis not the belly's hunger that costs so much, but its pride — Seneca The Younger

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

According to Seneca, the Greek word euthymia is one we should think of often: it is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it's not about beating the other guy. It's not about having more than the others. It's about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It's about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most that you're capable of in what you choose. That's it. No more and no less. (By the way, euthymia means "tranquillity" in English.) It's — Ryan Holiday

Life is divided into three periods, past, present and future. Of these, the present is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. For this last is the one over which Fortune has lost her power, which cannot be brought back to anyone's control. — Seneca.

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

No man's good by accident. Virtue has to be learnt. — Seneca.

Death either destroys or unhusks us. If it means liberation, better things await us when our burden s gone: if destruction, nothing at all awaits us; blessings and curses are abolished. — Seneca The Younger

O how many noble deeds of women are lost in obscurity! — Seneca.

As the mother's womb holds us for ten months, making us ready, not for the womb itself, but for life, just so, through our lives, we are making ourselves ready for another birth ... Therefore look forward without fear to that appointed hour- the last hour of the body, but not of the soul ... That day, which you fear as being the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity. — Seneca The Younger

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. — 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

A person's fears are lighter when the danger is at hand. — Seneca.

What is sweeter than to be so valued by one's wife that one becomes more valuable to oneself for this reason? Hence my dear Paulina is able to make me responsible, not only for her fears, but also for my own. — 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.

It is a youthful failing to be unable to control one's impulses. — Seneca The Younger

In my office, I have a very beautiful marble bust of Seneca. I always have my eye on him when I'm taking phone calls. He's one of the many philosophers I've always read and admired. — Brunello Cucinelli

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. — Seneca The Younger

We ought not to confine ourselves either to writing or to reading; the one, continuous writing, will cast a gloom over our strength, and exhaust it; the other will make our strength flabby and watery. It is better to have recourse to them alternately, and to blend one with the other, so that the fruits of one's reading may be reduced to concrete form by the pen. — Seneca The Younger

Man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy-that he live in accordance with his own nature. — Seneca The Younger

There's one blessing only, the source and cornerstone of beatitude: confidence in self. — Seneca The Younger

And there's no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed. — Seneca.

Lay hold of today's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by. 3. — Seneca.

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.

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

Turn to philosophy, therefore, with all your soul, sit at her feet, cherish her; a great distance will then begin to separate you from other men. You will be far ahead of all mortals, and even the gods will not be far ahead of you. Do you ask what will be the difference between yourself and the gods? They will live longer. But, by my faith, it is the sign of a great artist to have confined a full likeness to the limits of a miniature. The wise man's life spreads out to him over as large a surface as does all eternity to a god. There is one point in which the sage has an advantage over the god; for a god is freed from terrors by the bounty of nature, the wise man by his own bounty. — Seneca.

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

Humanity is the quality which stops one being arrogant towards one's fellows, or being acrimonious. — Seneca.

Fortune recently took away her mother, but your love will mean that she will only grieve over her mother's loss but not suffer for it. — Seneca.

One must take all one's life to learn how to leave, and what will perhaps make you wonder more, one must take all one's life to learn how to die. — Seneca The Younger

No prizefighter can go with high spirits into the strife if he has never been beaten black and blue; the only contestant who can confidently enter the lists is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent's fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary's charge, who has been downed in bloody but not it spirit, one who as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever. — Seneca.

Chance makes a plaything of a man's life. — Seneca The Younger

Fortune's not content with knocking a man down; she sends him spinning head over heels, crash upon crash. — Seneca The Younger

Life is a play.It's not its length,but its performance that counts. — Seneca The Younger

Polly Findlay showed real insight and imagination in her production of my translation of Seneca's Thyestes at the Arcola. I enjoyed her use of the space and the detail of her work with the actors, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with Light Shining. — Caryl Churchill

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. — Seneca The Younger

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. — Seneca The Younger

Would I fortify myself against the fear of death, it must be at the expense of Seneca: would I extract consolation for myself or my friend, I must borrow it from Cicero. I might have found it in myself, had I been trained to make use of my own reason. I do not like this relative and mendicant understanding; for though we could become learned by other men's learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom. — Michel De Montaigne

He wanted to grind every Federation world into dust beneath his boot as his army blazed a trail of blood and corpses all the way to Seneca.

He wanted to storm their inner sanctum and fire a laser into the skull of their Field Marshal while their Chairman watched, then fire a laser into the skull of their Chairman.

He wanted to burn their bodies on a pyre and carry the ashes back to Deucali and spread them on his mother's consecrated grave. — G.S. Jennsen

it is better to understand the balance-sheet of one's own life than of the corn trade. — Seneca.

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only for how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long. — Seneca.

Life's neither a good nor an evil: it's a field for good and evil. — Seneca The Younger

There is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn't just fall to a person's lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her. — Seneca The Younger

The world you see, nature's greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain. So, eager and upright, let us hasten with bold steps wherever circumstances take us, and let us journey through any countries whatever: there can be no place of exile within the world since nothing within the world is alien to men. — Seneca.

Demalion, we're alive.' Pantera's voice was unusually clipped, as if his patience had finally run to an end. 'If we were trying to get ourselves killed, we three would have managed it, I think. Two officers of the Fifth and a spy trained by Seneca could manage that much at least. — M.C. Scott

But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. Devote yourself entirely to her. You're worthy of her, she's worthy of you-fall into each other's arms. Say a firm, plain no to every other occupation. — Seneca.

It's all in your headJ you have the power to make things seem hard or easy or even amusing. The choice is yours. — Seneca The Younger

The spirit in which a thing is given determines that in which the debt is acknowledged; it's the intention, not the face-value of the gift, that's weighed — Seneca The Younger

And the house Kyler and I rented is actually near Seneca Rocks, so it's not that remote. It isn't like you're going to run into the chupacabra or a pack of aliens. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Foresee all the attacks and all the onslaughts of Fortune long before they hit me. She falls heavily on those to whom she is unexpected; the man who is always expecting her easily withstands her. For an enemy's arrival too scatters those whom it catches off guard; but those who have prepared in advance for the coming conflict, being properly drawn up and equipped, easily withstand the first onslaught, which is the most violent. — Seneca.

Misfortune is the test of a person's merit. — Seneca The Younger

It's a vice to trust all, and equally a vice to trust none. — Seneca The Younger

A man's past is forever set in stone. There — Seneca.

What view is one likely to take of the state of a person's mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no constraint? — Seneca The Younger

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.

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.

Plague on it! what madness this is, to punish one's self because one is unfortunate, and not to lessen, but to increase one's ills! — Seneca.

Death's the discharge of our debt of sorrow. — Seneca The Younger

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

Death: There's nothing bad about it at all except the thing that comes before it-the fear of it. — Seneca The Younger

However much you possess there's someone else who has more, and you'll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him. — Seneca.

It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business. — Seneca The Younger

Indeed the state of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but the most wretched are those who are toiling not even at their own preoccupations, but must regulate their sleep by another's, and their walk by another's pace, and obey orders in those freest of all things, loving and hating. If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own. — Seneca.

No one loves his country for its size or eminence, but because it's his own. — Seneca The Younger

Men's language is as their lives. — Seneca The Younger

If you live according to nature, you never will be poor; if according to the world's caprice, you will never be rich. — Seneca The Younger

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.

Possession of a friend should be with the spirit: the spirit's never absent: it sees daily whoever it likes. — Seneca.

Meanwhile, as they rob and are robbed, as they disturb each other's peace, as they make each other miserable, their lives pass without satisfaction, without pleasure, without mental improvement. — Seneca.

It is by far the best plan, therefore, to mingle leisure with business, whenever chance impediments or the state of public affairs forbid one's leading an active life: for one is never so cut off from all pursuits as to find no room left for honorable action. — Seneca.

There's some end at last for the man who follows a path; mere rambling is interminable. — Seneca The Elder

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. — Seneca.

Calamity is virtue's opportunity. — Seneca The Younger

How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did? He committed suicide! — Oriana Fallaci

Seneca's virtue shows forth so live and vigorous in his writings, and the defense is so clear there against some of these imputations, as that of his wealth and excessive spending, that I would not believe any testimony to the contrary. — Michel De Montaigne

But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body. — Seneca.

But he must have richly dyed purple clothes, woven with gold thread and decorated with multicoloured patterns: it is his fault, not nature's, if he feels poor. — Seneca.

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

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.

His trees were now hung all over with scrawled pieces of paper and bits of cardboard with maxims from Seneca and Shaftesbury, and with various objects; clusters of feathers, church candles, crowns of leaves, women's corsets, pistols, scales, tied to each other in certain order. The Ombrosians used to spend hours trying to guess what those symbols meant: nobles, Pope, virtue, war? I think some of them had no meaning at all but just served to jog his memory and make him realize that even the most uncommon ideas could be right. — Italo Calvino

No one who goes astray affects himself alone, but rather will be the cause and instigator of someone else going astray; it is harmful to attach oneself to the people in front, and, so long as each one of us prefers to trust someone else's judgment rather than relying on his own, we never exercise judgment in our lives but constantly resort to trust, and a mistake that has been passed down from one hand to another takes us over and spins our ruin. — Seneca.

Everything hangs on one's thinking. — Seneca The Younger

Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But 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? — Seneca.

No one is the object of another man's contempt, unless he is first the object of his own. — Seneca.

Crime oft recoils upon the author's head. — Seneca The Younger

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

It is in no man's power to have whatever he wants, but he has it in his power not to wish for what he hasn't got, and cheerfully make the most of the things that do come his way. — Seneca.

Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king's command or a people's favour. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that. — Seneca.