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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
Very often the things that cost nothing cost us the most heavily; I can show you many objects the quest and acquisition of which have wrested freedom from our hands.
Socrates is reported to have replied, when a certain person complained of having received no benefit from his travels: “It serves you right! You travelled in your own company!”
It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: “How did I get into this condition?”
Remember, however, before all else, to strip things of all that disturbs and confuses, and to see what each is at bottom; you will then comprehend that they contain nothing fearful except the actual fear.
Would you really know what philosophy offers to humanity? Philosophy offers counsel.
Before I became old I tried to live well; now that I am old, I shall try to die well; but dying well means dying gladly.
Lay hold of today’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.
Worse than war is the very fear of war.
That most knowing of persons – gossip.
All savageness is a sign of weakness.
A great fortune is a great slavery.
He maintained this attitude up to the very end, and no man ever saw Socrates too much elated or too much depressed. Amid all the disturbance of Fortune, he was undisturbed.
I do not trust my eyes to tell me what a man is: I have a better and more trustworthy light by which I can distinguish what is true from what is false: let the mind find out what is good for the mind.
There is nothing that brings greater trouble on us than the fact that we conform to rumor, thinking that what has won widespread approval is best, and that, as we have so many to follow as good, we live by the principle, not of reason, but of imitation.
Mankind is born for mutual assistance, anger for mutual ruin: the former loves society, the latter estrangement.
What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.
“All the Good of mortals is mortal.”
Pain he endures, death he awaits.
Two elements must therefore be rooted out once for all—the fear of future suffering, and the recollection of past suffering; since the latter no longer concerns me, and the former concerns me not yet.
Growth is slow but collapse is rapid.
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