“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“All cruelty springs from weakness.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Non est ad astra mollis e terris via” – “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms — you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject… And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them… Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.”
―Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. … The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. ”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“He who is brave is free”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“No man was ever wise by chance”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Only time can heal what reason cannot.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Timendi causa est nescire –
Ignorance is the cause of fear.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool ”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast – a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“The sun also shines on the wicked.”
―Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant.”
―Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“We learn not in the school, but in life.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Life is long if you know how to use it.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“We should every night call ourselves to an account;
What infirmity have I mastered today?
What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: ‘to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“There is no genius without a touch of madness.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca