Seneca Quotes

I am ashamed of my master and not of my servitude.

Reason wishes that the judgement it gives be just; anger wishes that the judgement it has given seem to be just.

Drunkenness doesn't create vices, but it brings them to the fore.

It's unknown the place and uncertain the time where death awaits you; thus you must expect death to find you, every time, at every place.

The language of truth is unvarnished enough.

Speech devoted to truth should be straightforward and plain

An unpopular rule is never long maintained.

God has given some gifts to the whole human race, from which no one is excluded.

On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.

Why will no man confess his faults? Because he continues to indulge in them; a man cannot tell his dream till he wakes.

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

When thou hast profited so much that thou respectest even thyself, thou mayst let go thy tutor.

How great would be our peril if our slaves began to number us!

Some lack the fickleness to live as they wish and just live as they have begun.

It is to the interest of the commonwealth of mankind that there should be someone who is unconquered, someone against whom fortune has no power.

Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy.

A friend always loves, but he who loves is not always a friend.

What is true belongs to me!

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.

Anyone can stop a man's life, but no one his death; a thousand doors open on to it.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

He worships God who knows him.

War I abhor, and yet how sweet The sound along the marching street Of drum and fife, and I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul.

Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.

Philosophy is good advice, and no one gives good advice at the top of his lungs.

When modesty has once perished, it will never revive.

What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend. That is progress indeed

Freedom can't be kept for nothing. If you set a high value on liberty, you must set a low value on everything else.

Nothing is so false as human life, nothing so treacherous. God knows no one would have accepted it as a gift, if it had not been given without our knowledge.

Now we are not merely to stick knowledge on to the soul: we must incorporate it into her; the soul should not be sprinkled with knowledge but steeped in it.

We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.

Elegance is not an ornament worthy of man.

You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.

There exists no more difficult art than living.

Those alone are wise who know how to love.

Shall I tell you what philosophy holds out to humanity? Counsel...You are called in to help the unhappy.

Death is sometimes a punishment, often a gift; to many it has been a favor.

That which takes effect by chance is not an art.

Necessity is stronger than duty.

Poverty needs much, avarice everything.

It's the great soul that surrenders itself to fate, but a puny degenerate thing that struggles.

Fine conduct is always spontaneous.

He who fears from near at hand often fears less.

Genius has never been accepted without a measure of condonement.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

The profit on a good action is to have done it.

All my life I have been seeking to climb out of the pit of my besetting sins and I cannot do it and I never will unless a hand is let down to draw me up.

To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.-

We pray for trifles without so much as a thought of the greatest blessings; and we are not ashamed many times, to ask God for that which we should blush to own to our neighbor.

Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts is therefore slow and tedious, whilst that of examples is summary and effectual.