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Seneca the Younger Quotes
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – A.D. 65), often known simply as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and humorist. He was the son of Seneca the Elder.
Philosophers Playwrights Poets Satirists Also known as: Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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408 quotes
He knows his own strength; he knows that he was born to carry burdens.
So near at hand is freedom, and is anyone still a slave?
No man can suffer both severely and for a long time; Nature, who loves us most tenderly, has so constituted us as to make pain either endurable or short.
I commend you and rejoice in the fact that you are persistent in your studies, and that, putting all else aside, you make it each day your endeavour to become a better man.
For what else are you busied with except improving yourself every day, laying aside some error, and coming to understand that the faults which you attribute to circumstances are in yourself?
And we cannot change this order of things; but what we can do is to acquire stout hearts, worthy of good men, thereby courageously enduring chance and placing ourselves in harmony with Nature.
Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life—in a firmness of mind and mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do, as well as to talk; and to make our actions and words all of a color.
God is not to be worshipped with sacrifices and blood; for what pleasure can He have in the slaughter of the innocent? but with a pure mind, a good and honest purpose. Temples are not to be built for Him with stones piled on high; God is to be consecrated in the breast of each.
Just as an enemy is more dangerous to a retreating army, so every trouble that fortune brings attacks us all the harder if we yield and turn our backs.
Why then do you occupy me with the words rather than with the works of wisdom? Make me braver, make me calmer, make me the equal of Fortune, make me her superior.
Mercy oft doth offer death, not life.
No man was ever wise by chance.
Apply reason to difficulties; harsh circumstances can be softened, narrow limits can be widened, and burdensome things can be made to press less severely on those who bear them cleverly.
The one loves to do good, the other to do harm; the one to help even strangers, the other to attack even its dearest friends.
Let us now enquire whether anger be in accordance with nature, and whether it be useful and worth entertaining in some measure.
The one is ready even to sacrifice itself for the good of others, the other to plunge into peril provided it drags others with it.
Press on, therefore, as you have begun; perhaps you will be led to perfection, or to a point which you alone understand is still short of perfection.
But both courses are to be avoided; you should not copy the bad simply because they are many, nor should you hate the many because they are unlike you.
Virtue runs no risk of becoming contemptible by being exposed to view, and it is better to be despised for simplicity than to be tormented by continual hypocrisy.
A hated government does not last long.
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