Seneca Quotes: 30

• Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures.

• 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.

• Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

• Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

• As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

• Non est ad astra mollis e terris via"- "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars

• It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

  The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

• 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.

  On the Shortness of Life

• No man was ever wise by chance

• Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

• Timendi causa est nescire - Ignorance is the cause of fear.

  Natural Questions

• If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.

  The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

• errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.

• 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.

  Letters from a Stoic

• The best ideas are common property

• The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.

• Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for crisis.

• What mancan you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he isdying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed,Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

  Letters from a Stoic

• No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity

  Dialogues and Letters

• As Lucretius says: 'Thus ever from himself doth each man flee.' But what does he gain if he does not escape from himself? He ever follows himself and weighs upon himself as his own most burdensome companion. And so we ought to understand that what we struggle with is the fault, not of the places, but of ourselves

  The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

• Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

  Letters from a Stoic

• I have learned to be a friend to myself Great improvement this indeed Such a one can never be said to be alone for know that he who is a friend to himself is a friend to all mankind

  Letters from a Stoic

• Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

• that you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they ought, some before they ought and some which ought never to torture us at all. We heighten our pain either by presupposing a cause or anticipation

  Letters from a Stoic

• you shall be told what pleased me to-day in the writings ofHecato; it is these words: "What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself."That wasindeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.

  Letters from a Stoic

• we deceive ourselves in thinking that death only follows life whereas it both goes before and will follow after it for where is the difference in not beginning or ceasing to exist the effect of both is not to be

  Letters from a Stoic

• Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.

  Letters From A Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium (Illustrated. Newly revised text. Includes Image Gallery + Audio): All Three Volumes

• Consider the whole world reconnoitre individuals j who is there whose life is not taken up with providing for to morrow Do you ask what harm there is in this An infinite deal for such men do not live but are about to live they defer every thing from day to day however circumspect we are life will still outrun us.

  Letters from a Stoic

• Believe me if you consult philosophy she will persuade you not to lit so long at your counting desk

  Letters from a Stoic

• Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.