Seneca The Younger Quotes

Prosperity asks for fidelity; adversity exacts it.

With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

Authority founded on injustice is never of long duration.

Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.

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

Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs.

The soul has this proof of divinity: that divine things delight it.

Whoever has nothing to hope, let him despair of nothing.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

It goes far toward making a man faithful to let him understand that you think him so; and he that does but suspect I will deceive him, gives me a sort of right to do so.

Fortune can take away riches, but not courage.

Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.

There are no greater wretches in the world than many of those whom people in general take to be happy.

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

How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant are the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same.

He who is everywhere is nowhere.

Leisure without literature is death and burial alive.

Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence. -Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium

Golden roofs break men's rest.

No possession is gratifying without a companion.

My joy in learning is partly that it enables me to teach.

Disease is not of the body but of the place.

Nihil tam acerbum est in quo non æquus animus solatium inveniat. There is nothing so disagreeable, that a patient mind can not find some solace for it.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

Who is everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

Every guilty person is his own hangman.

It is extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.

Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short... if one follows patterns.

Principles are like seeds; they are little things which do much good, if the mind that receives them has the right attitudes.

Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit

The man who thinks only of his own generation is born for few.

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

Many shed tears merely for show, and have dry eyes when no one's around to observe them.

There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.

That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.

A favor is to a grateful man delightful always; to an ungrateful man only once.

He deserves praise who does not what he may, but what he ought.

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

For greed, all nature is too little.

Remove severe restraint and what will become of virtue?

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

If you would judge, understand.

Life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is whole.

Fire proves gold, adversity proves men.

The largest part of goodness is the will to become good.