Seneca Quotes

…because it is natural to touch more often the parts that hurt.

~ Seneca

Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.

~ Seneca

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

~ Seneca

As Lucretius says: 'Thus ever from himself doth each man flee.' But what does he gain if he does not escape from himself? He ever follows himself and weighs upon himself as his own most burdensome companion. And so we ought to understand that what we struggle with is the fault, not of the places, but of ourselves

~ Seneca

Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.

~ Seneca

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.— Seneca

~ Seneca

And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles, he has not lived long – he has existed long. For what if you should think that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.

~ Seneca

It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and--what will perhaps make you wonder more--it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.

~ Seneca

The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.

~ Seneca

Life is divided into three parts: what was, what is and what shall be. Of these three periods, the present is short, the future is doubtful and the past alone is certain.

~ Seneca

Words need to be sown like seeds. No matter how tiny a seed may be, when in lands in the right sort of ground it unfolds its strength and from being minute expands and grows to a massive size.

~ Seneca

It takes all of our life to learn how to live, and – something that may surprise you more – it takes just as long to learn how to die.

~ Seneca

How silly then to imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even self-preservation in continual and very rapid change.

~ Seneca

Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits, After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.

~ Seneca

Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.

~ Seneca

Sorrowers tend to avoid what they are most fond of and try to give vent to their grief.

~ Seneca

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.

~ Seneca

I've come across people who say that there is a sort of inborn restlessness in the human spirit and an urge to change one's abode; for man is endowed with a mind which is changeable and and unsettled: nowhere at rest, it darts about and directs its thoughts to all places known and unknown, a wanderer which cannot endure repose and delights chiefly in novelty.

~ Seneca

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

All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re traveling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.

~ Seneca

The trip doesn’t exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears … so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea. Does it surprise you that running away doesn’t do you any good? The things you’re running away from are with you all the time.

~ Seneca

So long, in fact, as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid, what is essential and what is superfluous, what is upright or honorable conduct and what is not, it will not be travelling but drifting. All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re travelling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.

~ Seneca

Once you have rid yourself of the affliction there, though, every change of scene will become a pleasure. You may be banished to the ends of the earth, and yet in whatever outlandish corner of the world you may find yourself stationed, you will find that place, whatever it may be like, a hospitable home. Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.

~ Seneca

The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing.

~ Seneca

Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool

~ Seneca

Oh, what darkness does great prosperity cast over our minds!

~ Seneca

If you look on wealth as a thing to be valued your imaginary poverty will cause you torment.

~ Seneca

The shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth.

~ Seneca

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them

~ Seneca

The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.

~ Seneca

There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

~ Seneca

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

~ Seneca

However much you possess there's someone else who has more, and you'll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him.

~ Seneca

Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all.

~ Seneca

For Fate/ The willing leads, the unwilling drags along.

~ Seneca

I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness.

~ Seneca

[Philosophers] have come to envy the philologist and the mathematician, and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies—with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives.

~ Seneca

Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate.

~ Seneca

All cruelty springs from weakness.

~ Seneca

Count your years and you'll be ashamed to be wanting and working for exactly the same things as you wanted when you were a boy. Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do. Have done with those unsettled pleasures, which cost one dear - they do one harm after they're past and gone, not merely when they're in prospect. Even when they're over, pleasures of a depraved nature are apt to carry feelings of dissatisfaction, in the same way as a criminal's anxiety doesn't end with the commission of the crime, even if it's undetected at the time. Such pleasures are insubstantial and unreliable; even if they don't do one any harm, they're fleeting in character. Look around for some enduring good instead. And nothing answers this description except what the spirit discovers for itself within itself. A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness. Even if some obstacle to this comes on the scene, its appearance is only to be compared to that of clouds which drift in front of the sun without ever defeating its light.

~ Seneca