Top 995 Quotes & Sayings by Seneca the Younger - Page 2

Life without the courage to die is slavery.

Our fears are always more numerous than our dangers.

Self-denial is the best riches.

What were once vices are the fashion of the day.

God is near you, is with you, is inside you.

Retirement without the love of letters is a living burial.

It is the sign of a weak mind to be unable to bear wealth.

If virtue precede us every step will be safe.

If thou wishest to get rid of thy evil propensities, thou must keep far from evil companions.

We learn not in the school, but in life.

The best cure for anger is delay.

Money has never yet made anyone rich.

There in no one more unfortunate than the man who has never been unfortunate. for it has never been in his power to try himself.

The worse a person is the less he feels it.

Authority founded on injustice is never of long duration.

Human nature is so constituted that insults sink deeper than kindnesses; the remembrance of the latter soon passes away, while that of the former is treasured in the memory.

I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes; and this may be done by moderate desires.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other.

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.

That which has been endured with difficulty is remedied with delight.

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.

Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.

Luck is preparation multiplied by opportunity.

When you die, it will not be because you are sick, but because you were alive.

When you see a man in distress, recognize him as a fellow man.

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.

How much longer are you going to be a pupil? From now on do some teaching as well.

The person you are matters more than the place to which you go.

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

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

It is never too late to turn from the errors of our ways: He who repents of his sins is almost innocent.

No good thing is pleasant without friends to share it.

There is nothing more despicable than an old man who has no other proof than his age to offer of his having lived long in the world.

What-so-ever the mind has ordained for itself, it has achieved

A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.

The greatest power of ruling consists in the exercise of self-control.

Speech is the mirror of the mind.

It is the mind that makes us rich and happy, in what condition soever we are, and money signifies no more to it than it does to the gods.

Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.

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?

Great men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

Eyes will not see when the heart wishes them to be blind.

Many things have fallen only to rise higher.

The mind makes the nobleman, and uplifts the lowly to high degree.

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

To govern was to serve, not to rule.

The most miserable mortals are they that deliver themselves up to their palates, or to their lusts; the pleasure is short, and turns presently nauseous, and the end of it is either shame or repentance.

True happiness is...to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

There is more heroism in self-denial than in deeds of arms.

Away with the world's opinion of you-it's always unsettled and divided.

No man is free who is a slave to the flesh.

To see a man fearless in dangers, untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.

As was his language so was his life.

Life is most delightful on the downward slope.

If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.

Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition.

A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation...you have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it.

If we desire to judge justly, we must persuade ourselves that none of us is without sin.

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