Seneca Quotes

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

Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

~ Seneca

Timendi causa est nescire - Ignorance is the cause of fear.

~ Seneca

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

~ Seneca

Non est ad astra mollis e terris via - There is no easy way from the earth to the stars

~ Seneca

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

No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity

~ Seneca

To win true freeedom you must be a slave to philosophy.

~ Seneca

Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

~ Seneca

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

~ Seneca

that you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they ought, some before they ought and some which ought never to torture us at all. We heighten our pain either by presupposing a cause or anticipation

~ Seneca

Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.

~ Seneca

they Whatever can make life truly happy is absolutely good in its own right because it cannot be warped into evil From whence then comes error In that while all men wish for a happy life they mistake the means for the thing itself and while they fancy themselves in pursuit of it they are flying from it for when the sum of happiness consists in solid tranquillity and an unembarrassed confidence therein they are ever collecting causes of disquiet and not only carry burthens but drag them painfully along through the rugged and deceitful path of life so that they still withdraw themselves from the good effect proposed the more pains they take the more business they have upon their hands instead of advancing they are retrograde and as it happens in a labyrinth their very speed puzzles and confounds them

~ Seneca

we deceive ourselves in thinking that death only follows life whereas it both goes before and will follow after it for where is the difference in not beginning or ceasing to exist the effect of both is not to be

~ Seneca

Consider the whole world reconnoitre individuals j who is there whose life is not taken up with providing for to morrow Do you ask what harm there is in this An infinite deal for such men do not live but are about to live they defer every thing from day to day however circumspect we are life will still outrun us.

~ Seneca

Believe me if you consult philosophy she will persuade you not to lit so long at your counting desk

~ Seneca

I have learned to be a friend to myself Great improvement this indeed Such a one can never be said to be alone for know that he who is a friend to himself is a friend to all mankind

~ Seneca

you shall be told what pleased me to-day in the writings ofHecato; it is these words: What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself. That wasindeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.

~ Seneca

On Epicurus; He says: Contended poverty is an honourable estate. Indeed, if it is contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

~ Seneca

[I]ndulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. It needs to be treated somewhat strictly to prevent it from being disobedient to the spirit. Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather.

~ Seneca

Reflect that nothing merits admiration except thespirit, the impressiveness of which prevents it from being impressed by anything.

~ Seneca

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

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

~ Seneca

Huius (sapientis) opus unum est de divinis humanisque verum invenire; ab hac numquam recedit religio, pietas, iustitia ...

~ Seneca

¿Preguntas cúal es el fundamento de la sabiduría? No gozarte en cosas vanas.

~ Seneca

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

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

What mancan you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he isdying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed,Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

~ Seneca

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?

~ Seneca

If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.

~ Seneca

The part of life we really live is small.' For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

~ Seneca

It's not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.

~ Seneca

f you wish to put off all worry, assume that what you fear may happen is certainly going to happen.

~ Seneca

There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with

~ Seneca

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

~ Seneca

But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.

~ Seneca

It's easier to get philosophers to agree than clocks.

~ Seneca

A woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body.

~ 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

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

~ Seneca