Seneca Quotes

If you expect the wise man to be as angry as the baseness of crimes requires, then he must not only be angry but go insane.

It's a vice to trust all, and equally a vice to trust none.

The fear of war is worse than war itself.

The man who does something under orders is not unhappy; he is unhappy who does something against his will.

Prudence and love cannot be mixed; you can end love, but never moderate it.

How can a thing possibly govern others when it cannot be governed itself?

Let us fight the battle-retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.

When one has lost a friend one's eyes should be neither dry nor streaming. Tears, yes, there should be, but not lamentation.

Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.

Just where death is expecting you is something we cannot know; so, for your part, expect him everywhere.

The road by precepts is tedious, by example, short and efficacious.

Who has more leisure than a worm?

[During difficult times and after mistakes and failures it is helpful to remember ...] Oftentimes calamity turns to our advantage and great ruins make way for greater glories.

There is no benefit so large that malignity will not lessen it; none so narrow that a good interpretation will not enlarge it.

There is no power greater than true affection.

No crime has been without a precedent.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned.

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

He that by harshness of nature rules his family with an iron hand is as truly a tyrant as he who misgoverns a nation.

All that lies betwixt the cradle and the grave is uncertain.

Vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together.

We pardon familiar vices.

An old man at school is a contemptible and ridiculous object.

Bear in mind that you commit a crime by injuring even a wicked brother.

Concealed anger is to be feared; but hatred openly manifested destroys its chance of revenge.

Crime requires further crime to conceal it.

He, who holds out but a doubtful hope of succour to the afflicted, denies it.

Light cares cry out; the great ones still are dumb.

Light is that grief which counsel can allay.

Prudence will punish to prevent crime, not to avenge it.

Retirement without literary amusements is death itself, and a living tomb.

So enjoy the pleasures of the hour as not to spoil those that are to follow.

Success gives the character of honesty to some classes of wickedness.

Successful villany is called virtue.

The anger of those in authority is always weighty.

The more violent the storm the sooner it is over.

The world itself is too small for the covetous.

There is no evil without its compensation.

Those griefs burn most which gall in secret.

To meditate an injury is to commit one.

If you are surprised at the number of our maladies, count our cooks.

It is part of the cure to wish to be cured.

Hold fast then to this sound and wholesome rule of life; indulge the body only as far as is needful for health.

Let him that hath done the good office conceal it; let him that received it disclose it.

It is better to have useless knowledge than to know nothing.

Tota vita nihil aliud quam ad mortem iter est. The whole of life is nothing but a journey to death.

Life, if thou knowest how to use it, is long enough.

It is a tedious thing to be always beginning life; they live badly who always begin to live.

To live is not a blessing, but to live well.