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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 the Younger

Plura sunt, Lucili, quae nos terrent quam quae premunt, et saepius opinione quam re laboramus.

Original text (Latin)

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Imagination

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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Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.

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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.