Seneca Quotes

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”

— Seneca

“Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.”

— Seneca

“Errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.”

— Seneca

“To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.”

— Seneca

“While we wait for life, life passes”

— Seneca

“The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but
we have been a long time on the way.”

— Seneca

“Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness”

— Seneca

Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.

— Seneca

“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only for how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.”

— 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

“Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But 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?”

— Seneca

“Distringit librorum multitudo
(the abundance of books is distraction)”

— Seneca

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”

— Seneca

“Religion is regarded by the ignorant as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

— Seneca

“All things that are still to come lie in uncertainty; live straightway!”

— Seneca

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.

— Seneca

“So let those people go on weeping and wailing whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity, let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries; but let those who have spent all their years suffering disasters endure the worst afflictions with a brave and resolute staunchness. Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing, that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts.”

— Seneca

“Vices have to be crushed rather than picked at.”

— Seneca

No good thing renders its possessor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss; nothing, however, is lost with less discomfort than that which, when lost, cannot be missed.

— Seneca

“But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. Devote yourself entirely to her. You're worthy of her, she's worthy of you-fall into each other's arms. Say a firm, plain no to every other occupation.”

— Seneca

“Life, if you know how to use it, is long; but ... many, following no fixed aim, shifting and ... dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course.”

— Seneca

“From this state also will he flee. If I should attempt to enumerate them one by one, I should not find a single one which could tolerate the wise man or which the wise man could tolerate.”

— Seneca

“Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at.”

— Seneca

“The mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply.”

— Seneca

“But it is one thing to remember, another to know. Remembering is merely safeguarding something entrusted to the memory; knowing, however, means making everything your own; it means not depending upon the copy and not all the time glancing back at the master.”

— Seneca

“But consider whether you may not get more help from the customary method[1] than from that which is now commonly called a "breviary," though in the good old days, when real Latin was spoken, it was called a "summary."[2]”

— Seneca

“Prosperity does not elevate the sage and adversity does not depress him. For he has always made the effort to rely as much as possible on himself and to derive all delight from himself.”

— Seneca

“He praised his own achievements, not without cause but without end.”

— Seneca

“If you gain from a crime, you did it.”

— Seneca

“It does not make any difference what a man say; what matters is how he feels, and not how he feels on one particular day but how he feels at all times.”

— Seneca

“Besides, he who is feared, fears also; no one has been able to arouse terror and live in peace of mind.”

— Seneca

“If an evil has been pondered beforehand, the blow is gentle when it comes.”

— Seneca

“Istam terra de fossam premat,
gravisque terrus impio capiti incubet!
(As for her, let her be buried deep in earth,
and heavy may the soil lie on her unholy head.)”

— Seneca

“No one becomes a laughingstock who laughs at himself.”

— Seneca

The first thing which philosophy undertakes to give is fellow-feeling with all men; in other words, sympathy and sociability.

— Seneca

“But whatever the quality of my works may be, read them as if I were still seeking, and were not aware of, the truth, and were seeking it obstinately, too. For I have sold myself to no man; I bear the name of no master. I give much credit to the judgment of great men; but I claim something also for my own. For these men, too, have left to us, not positive discoveries, but problems whose solution is still to be sought.”

— Seneca

“Of all men only those who find time for philosophy are at leisure, only they are truly alive; for it is not only their own lifetime they guard well; they add every age to their own; all the years that have passed before them they requisition for their store.”

— Seneca

“We must, therefore, take a less serious view of all things, tolerating them in a spirit of acceptance: It is more human to laugh at life than to weep tears over it.”

— Seneca

“It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence.”

— Seneca

“No one keeps himself waiting; and yet the greatest cure for anger is to wait, so that the initial passion it engenders may die down, and the fog that shrouds the mind may subside, or become less thick.”

— Seneca

“A hungry people neither listens to reason nor is mollified by fair treatment or swayed by any appeals.”

— Seneca

Counting even yesterday, all past time is lost time; the very day which we are now spending is shared between ourselves and death. It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that which previously has flowed out; similarly, the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way. 21.

— Seneca

“Truth often harms the one who digs it up.”

— Seneca

“A man's peace of mind does not depend upon Fortune; for, even when angry she grants enough for our needs.”

— Seneca

“If you regard your last day not as a punishment but as a law of nature, the breast from which you have banished the dread of death no fear will dare to enter.”

— Seneca

“When things are at their worst,
there are no tears.”

— Seneca

“It is a small part of life we really live.' Indeed, all the rest is not life but merely time.”

— Seneca

“Lay hold of today's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by. 3.”

— Seneca

Again, when my mind is lifted up by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious for words and longs to match its higher inspiration with its language, and so produces a style that conforms to the impressiveness of the subject matter.

— Seneca

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”

— Seneca