Seneca the Younger Quotes
-
What should a wise person do when given a blow? Same as Cato when he was attacked; not fire up or revenge the insult., or even return the blow, but simply ignore it.
→ -
Time discovers truth.
→ -
Those whom true love has held, it will go on holding.
→ -
Real improvement is of slow growth only.
→ -
How great would be our peril if our slaves began to number us!
→ -
No man is nobler born than another, unless he is born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition. They who make such a parade with their family pictures and pedigrees, are, properly speaking, rather to be called noted or notorious than noble persons. I thought it right to say this much, in order to repel the insolence of men who depend entirely upon chance and accidental circumstances for distinction, and not at all on public services and personal merit.
→ -
There has not been any great talent without an element of madness. -Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit
→ -
The rust of the mind is the destruction of genius.
→ -
We are sure to get the better of fortune if we do but grapple with her.
→ -
Prudence will punish to prevent crime, not to avenge it.
→ -
The great thing is to know when to speak and when to keep quiet.
→ -
When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?
→ -
A crowd of fellow-sufferers is a miserable kind of comfort.
→ -
I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling
→ -
It is expedient for the victor to wish for peace restored; for the vanquished it is necessary.
→ -
While we teach, we learn.
→ -
Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart.
→ -
The best cure for anger is delay.
→ -
So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.
→ -
Epicurus says, "gratitude is a virtue that has commonly profit annexed to it." And where is the virtue that has not? But still the virtue is to be valued for itself, and not for the profit that attends it.
→ -
The key to getting everything you want is to never put all your begs in one ask-it!
→ -
A foolishness is inflicted with a hatred of itself.
→ -
Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.
→ -
If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him. Ignoranti quem portum petat, nullus suus ventus est.
→ -
No man is born wise; but wisdom and virtue require a tutor; though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master.
→ -
You want to live-but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying-and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?
→ -
No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another, if thou wishest to live for thyself.
→ -
We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.
→ -
You should keep on learning as long as there is something you do not know.
→ -
We are born to lose and to perish, to hope and to fear, to vex ourselves and others; and there is no antidote against a common calamity but virtue; for the foundation of true joy is in the conscience.
→