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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.

— Seneca the Younger

Felix, quisquis novit famulum
Rogemque pati,
Vultusque potest variare suos!
Rapuit vires pondusque malis,
Casus animo qui tulit æquo.

Original text (Latin)

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Luck

More quotes by Seneca the Younger

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

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

Prosperous and successful crime goes by the name of virtue; good men obey the bad, might is right and fear oppresses law.

Fortune is less severe against those of lesser degree, and God strikes what is weak with less power.

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

All Seneca the Younger quotes →

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O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?

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Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Seneca the Younger (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.