A Quote by Seneca the Younger

It is easy enough to arouse in a listener a desire for what is honorable; for in every one of us nature has laid the foundations or sown the seeds of the virtues. We are born to them all, all of us, and when a person comes along with the necessary stimulus, then those qualities of the personality are awakened, so to speak, from their slumber.

Seneca the Younger

Quote Topics

Along Arouse Awakened Born Desire Easy Enough Every Foundations Honorable Laid Listener Nature Necessary Person Personality Qualities Seeds Slumber Speak Stimulus Them Then Those Us Virtues

Quote Author

Seneca the Younger
Roman - Philosopher
4 BC - 65

God, to prevent all escape, hath sown the seeds of death in our very constitution and nature, so that we can as soon run from ourselves, as run from death. We need no feller to come with a hand of violence and hew us down; there is in the tree a worm, which grows out of its own substance, that will destroy it; so in us, those infirmities of nature that will bring us down to the dust.

William Gurnall

Though we all have the fear and the seeds of anger within us, we must learn not to water those seeds and instead nourish our positive qualities - those of compassion, understanding, and loving kindness.

Nhat Hanh

Those who dream must be awakened, and the deeper the people are who slumber, or the deeper they slumber, the more important it is that they be awakened, and the more powerfully must they be awakened.

Soren Kierkegaard

To injure another creates bondage and hides the truth. Negative virtues are not enough; we have to conquer Maya, and then she will follow us. We only deserve things when they cease to bind us. When the bondage ceases, really and truly, all things come to us. Only those who want nothing are masters of nature.

Swami Vivekananda

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message from the dead - from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Charles Kingsley

When our neighbor's personality possesses harsh qualities, we show our love by not voluntarily provoking those qualities in any way. Past experience shows us what upsets a person, so in their presence we are careful not to do or say those things that cause anger. We are self-effacing.

Mother Angelica

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Aristotle

It was good for us, I suppose. Those kinds of times produce qualities in us that make us better for having had them. My parents were not getting along. My mother was quite intolerant of friendships that were being developed.

Fay Wray

Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Aristotle

Every individual nature has its own beauty. One is struck in every company, at every fireside, with the riches of nature, when he hears so many new tones, all musical, sees in each person original manners, which have a proper and peculiar charm, and reads new expressions of face. He perceives that nature has laid for each the foundations of a divine building, if the soul will build thereon.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.

Julia Cameron

The virtues [moral excellence] therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.

Aristotle

I'm benefitting from the sacrifices and seeds sown by Shirley Chisholm, John Lewis, and so many others. Those of us who are beneficiaries owe it to have a season of service in which we try to give back.

Terri Sewell

So it is with life. Those thorns, the prickly problems of life, cause us to strive to rise above them and then, as we do, we learn. We learn to exercise true compassion, true kindness - or the thorns, if we let them, cause us to brood, to mourn over our trials. Then we plant the seeds of bitterness, hate, and ruin - weeds. We may reach up for the rose or down to the weeds...the weeds in life that tangle us, strangle us, and cause us to lose hope.

James Michael

Im benefitting from the sacrifices and seeds sown by Shirley Chisholm, John Lewis, and so many others. Those of us who are beneficiaries owe it to have a season of service in which we try to give back.

Terri Sewell

Those virtues which cost us dear prove that we love God; those which are easy to us prove that He loves us.