An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them. In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.
Urbes constituit ætas: hora dissolvit: momento fit cinis: diu sylva.
Original text (Latin)
More quotes by Seneca the Younger
It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
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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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.
Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.
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.