Selected Quotes By Seneca
"Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach."
Seneca, Goals
"Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men."
Seneca, Problems, Courage
"To wish to be well is a part of becoming well."
Seneca, Goals
"errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical."
Seneca, Mistakes
"But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future."
Seneca, Time, Life
"We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift."
Seneca, Life
"While we wait for life, life passes."
Seneca, Life
"Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it."
Seneca, Anger and Fighting
"Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart."
Seneca, Life
"It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more."
Seneca, Wealth
"There is no genius without a touch of madness."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer."
Seneca, Life
"We learn not in the school, but in life."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"Life is long if you know how to use it."
Seneca, Time, Life
"We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality."
Seneca, Life
"Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age."
Seneca, Life
"A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand."
Seneca, Anger and Fighting
"Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
Seneca, Life
"The sun also shines on the wicked."
Seneca, Life
"Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay; yet we easily let others encroach on our lives—worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers."
Seneca, Time, Wealth, Life
"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it."
Seneca, Time, Life
"For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it? A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys."
Seneca, Happiness
"People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy."
Seneca, Wealth
"Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool."
Seneca, Wealth
"As long as you live, keep learning how to live."
Seneca, Life
"Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters."
Seneca, Life
"Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones."
Seneca, Life
"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power."
Seneca, Power
"Timendi causa est nescire - Ignorance is the cause of fear."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich."
Seneca, Life
"Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately."
Seneca, Life, Goals
"Only time can heal what reason cannot."
Seneca, Time
"I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good."
Seneca, Criticism
"He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary."
Seneca, Life
"Associate with people who are likely to improve you."
Seneca, Goals
"They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn."
Seneca, Life
"No man was ever wise by chance."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears."
Seneca, Life
"He who is brave is free."
Seneca, Courage, Freedom
"Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them."
Seneca, Wealth
"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."
Seneca, Life
"If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person."
Seneca, Life
"It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully."
Seneca, Time, Life
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
Seneca, Wealth
"The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms -- you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older."
Seneca, Life
"If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable."
Seneca, Goals
"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."
Seneca, Life
"You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire."
Seneca, Life
"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."
Seneca, Problems
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."
Seneca, Belief
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
Seneca, Kindness, Strength
"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via" - "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars."
Seneca, Problems
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
Seneca, Opportunities
"True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not."
Seneca, Happiness, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."