Lucius Annaeus Seneca

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

He who seeks wisdom is a wise man; he who thinks he has found it is mad.

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.

Where silence is not allowed, what then is permissible?

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

To wish well is part of becoming well.

There is nothing which persevering effort and unceasing and diligent care can not accomplish.

He who decides a case without hearing the other side ... though he decides justly, cannot be considered just.

It is with life as with a playit matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is.

If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not communicate it, I would refuse the gift.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires.

Truth never perishes.

The true felicity of life is to be free from anxieties and perturbations; to understand and do our duties to God and man, and to enjoy the present without any serious dependence on the future.

Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

It is sometimes pleasant even to act like a madman. Aliquando et insanire iucundum est

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.

The hour which gives us life begins to take it away.

Whom they have injured they also hate. Quos læserunt et oderunt

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.

The person you are matters more than the place to which you go.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs.

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.

Nature has given to us the seeds of knowledge, not knowledge itself.

Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.

We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.

A young man respects and looks up to his teachers. Praeceptores suos adulescens veneratur et suspicit

Man is a reasoning Animal.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

He who comes to a conclusion when the other side is unheard, may have been just in his conclusion, but yet has not been just in his conduct.

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.

This life is only a prelude to eternity.

Not he who has little, but he whose wishes more, is poor.

There is a noble manner of being poor and who does not know it will never be rich.

Everything may happen. Omnio fieri possent

Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.

The gladiator is making his plan in the arena (i.e. too late). Gladiator in arena consilium capit

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim.

We are more easily led part by part to an understanding of the whole. Facilius per partes in cognitionem totius adducimur

No man ever became wise by chance.

There is no delight in owning anything unshared.

If thou live according to nature, thou wilt never be poor; if according to the opinions of the world, thou wilt never be rich.

We are more wicked together than separately. If you are forced to be in a crowd, then most of all you should withdraw into yourself.

The mind should be allowed some relaxation, that it may return to its work all the better for the rest.

Live with men as if God saw you; converse with God as if men heard you.

We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?

There is no great genius without a tincture of madness. Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiæ

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

If thou wishest to be loved, love.

It is extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die.

People do not care how nobly they live, only how long, despite the fact that it is within everyone's reach to live nobly, but within no one's reach to live long.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

Our (the Stoic) motto, as you know, is live according to nature.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and to read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

This is the reason we cannot complain of life: it keeps no one against his will.

Life is a gift of the immortal Gods, but living well is the gift of philosophy.

I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

Life is neither a good nor an evil; it is simply the place where good and evil exist.

Do the best you can ... enjoy the present ... rest satisfied with what you have.

Leisure without literature is death, or rather the burial of a living man Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura.

We learn not in the school, but in life.

Even while they teach, men learn.

All things are cause for either laughter or weeping.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.

If you judge, investigate.

In every good man a God doth dwell.

Ignorance is the cause of fear. Timendi causa est nescire

An honest heart possesses a kingdom.

You roll my log, and I will roll yours.

Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.

If you would make a man happy, do not add to his possessions but subtract from the sum of his desires.

Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all plate is no more than earthenware.

Whatever is to make us better and happy, God has placed either openly before us or close to us.

True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man; 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 abundantly sufficient; for he that is so wants nothing. The great blessings of mankind are within us, and within our reach; but we shut our eyes and, like people in the dark, fall foul of the very thing we search for without finding it. Tranquility is a certain quality of mind which no condition of fortune can either exalt or depress.

For greed all nature is too little.

A great man can come from a hut. Potest ex casa magnus vir exire

No era is closed to great intellects. Nullum saeculum magnis ingeniis clausum est

It is another's fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.

A good mind possesses a kingdom.

When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

Let him who has given a favor be silent; let he who has received it tell it. Qui dedit beneficium taceat; narrat qui accepit

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly intertwined 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?

Do not grudge your brother his rest. He has at last become free, safe and immortal, and ranges joyous through the boundless heavens; he has left this low-lying region and has soared upwards to that place which receives in its happy bosom the souls set free from the chains of matter. Your brother has not lost the light of day, but has obtained a more enduring light. He has not left us, but has gone on before.

Death: A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.

It is not because it is difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man.... It is more powerful than external circumstances.

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

Courage leads to heaven; fear leads to death.

About his father: Devoted to the tradition of his ancestors Maiorum consuetudini deditus

Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.

A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it. But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness.

Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.

Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life.

You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.

You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.

Chance makes a plaything of a man's life.

Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it.

Love of bustle is not industry.

It is well to be born either a king or a fool.

It does not matter how many books you have, but how good the books are which you have.

Mere life is not a blessing, but to live well.

It is not goodness to be better than the worst. Bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem

The best ideas are common property.

Let us bear with magnanimity whatever it is needful for us to bear.

To see a man fearless in dangers. untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.

It is proof of a bad cause when it is appluaded by the mob.

The appearances of things are deceptive. Fallaces sunt rerum species

Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

Drunkenness does not create vice; it merely brings it into view.

As for old age, embrace and love it. It abounds with pleasure, if you know how to use it. The gradually (I do not say rapidly) declining years are amongst the sweetest in a mans life; and, I maintain, that even where they have reached the extreme limit, they have their pleasure still.

There is no power greater than true affection.

Just as so many rivers, so many showers of rain from above, so many medicinal springs do not alter the taste of the sea, so the pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man. For it maintains its balance, and over all that happens it throws its own complexion, because it is more powerful than external circumstances.

An action will not be right unless the will be right; for from thence is the action derived. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind be right; for from thence comes the will.

The whole duty of man is embraced in the two principles of abstinence and patience: temperance in prosperity, and patient courage in adversity.

The stomach begs and clamors, and listens to no precepts. And yet it is not an obdurate creditor; for it is dismissed with small payment if you give it only what you owe, and not as much as you can.

Light cares speak, great ones are speechless. Curae leves loquuntur ingentes stupent

It goes far toward making a man faithful to let him understand that you think him so; and he that does but suspect I will deceive him, gives me a sort of right to do so.

A giant will keep his size even though he will have stood in a well. Colossus magnitudinem suam servabit etiam si steterit in puteo

There has not been any great talent without an element of madness. Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit

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

A great fortune is a great slavery.

Who needs forgiveness, should the same extend with readiness.

What with our hooks, snares, nets, and dogs, we are at war with all living creatures, and nothing comes amiss but that which is either too cheap or too common; and all this is to gratify a fantastical palate.

Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardship of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.

What must be shall be; and that which is a necessity to him that struggles, is little more than choice to him that struggles.

I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge of the man.

The road be precepts is tedious, by example short and efficacious.

The evil which assails us is not in the localities we inhabit but in ourselves.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence. Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium

That grief is light which can take counsel.

Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration, but temper and moderation generally produce permanence in all things.

Remember that pain has this most excellent quality: if prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot Be prolonged.

See how does great prosperity overspreads the mind with darkness.

Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the white at any distance.

Modesty once extinguished knows not how to return.

Malice drinks one half of its own poison.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some one talent. Yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely, for all science is one.

Take away ambitions and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots?

Not he who has little, but he who wishes for more, is poor.

The ascent from earth to heaven is not easy.

The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.

The first petition that we are to make to Almighty God is for a good conscience, the next for health of mind, and then of body.

Light troubles speak; immense troubles are silent.

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.

Nature has given us the seeds of knowledge, not knowledge itself.

Night brings our troubles to the light rather than banishes them.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

No man is free who is a slave to the flesh.

Nothing costs so much as what is bought by prayers.

Nothing is more common than for great thieves to ride in triumph when small ones are punished.

Nothing is more dishonorable than an old man, heavy with years, who has no other evidence of his having lived long except his age.

Nothing is void of God; He Himself fills His work.

Old age is an incurable disease.

One crime is concealed by the commission of another.

One should count each day a separate life.

Our plans miscarry if they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of Ambition that it never looks behind it.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit.

It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

Everything that exceeds the bounds of moderation has an unstable foundation.

Economy is in itself a source of great revenue.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

Death is sometimes a punishment, sometimes a gift; to many it has come as a favor.

Courage leads to heaven; fear, to death.

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.

Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his Attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, A brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.

Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Anger, though concealed, is betrayed by the countenance.

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party: there is no battle unless there be two.

A hungry people listens not to reason, nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.

A great mind becomes a great fortune.

A great fortune is a great servitude.

There can be slain No sacrifice to God more acceptable Than an unjust and wicked king.

Calamity is virtue's opportunity.

If thou wishest to get rid of thy evil propensities, thou must keep far from evil companions.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

It is uncertain in what place death may await thee; therefore expect it in any place.

The fortunes of war are always doubtful.

It is the edge and temper of the blade that make a good sword, not the richness of the scabbard; and so it is not money or possessions that make man considerable, but his virtue.

Since learned men have appeared, good men have become rare.

It is not goodness to be better than the very worst.

It is best to bear what can't be altered.

It better befits a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

If you wished to be loved, love.

Fortune can take away riches, but not courage.

If we could trace our descendants, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves.

Life, if thou knowest how to use it, is long enough.

If I give way to pleasure, I must also yield to grief, to poverty, to labor, ambition, anger, until I am torn to pieces by my misfortunes and my lust.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

He who boasts of his descent, praises the deeds of another.

He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.

Happy the man who can endure the highest And the lowest fortune. He, who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity, has deprived misfortune of its power.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

Gold is tried by fire, brave men by adversity.

If you live according to nature, you never will be poor; if according to the world's caprice, you will never be rich.

When you see a man in distress, recognize him as a fellow man.

Time discovers truth.

To wish to be well is a part of becoming well.

True love hates and will not bear delay.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

Truth lies wrapped up and hidden in the depths.

This body is not a home, but an inn; And that only for a short time.

Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for a kindness.

To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

We have suffered lightly, if we have suffered what we should weep for.

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

We are sure to get the better of fortune if we do But grapple with her.

Virtue is that perfect good which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.

Vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together.

The whole concord of this world consists in discords.

The language of truth is simple.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

The pleasure of all things increases by the same danger that should deter it.

The soul has this proof of its divinity: that divine things delight in it.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

The sun shines even on the wicked.

The velocity with which time flies is infinite, As is most apparent to those who look back.

The voice is nothing but beaten air.

The way to wickedness is always through wickedness.

There is no genius free from some tincture of madness.

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

There is nothing so disagreeable, that a patient mind cannot find some solace for it.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

All art is but imitation of nature.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

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