Seneca the Younger Quotes

130 Sourced Quotes

All art is but imitation of nature.

Seneca the Younger
You must want nothing if you wish to challenge Jupiter, who himself wants nothing.

Seneca the Younger
Mercy often means giving death, not life.

Seneca the Younger
We are all chained to fortune: the chain of one is made of gold, and wide, while that of another is short and rusty.

Seneca the Younger
Death is neither a good nor a bad thing, for that alone which is something can be a good or a bad thing: but that which is nothing, and reduces all things to nothing, does not hand us over to either fortune, because good and bad require some material to work upon. Fortune cannot take ahold of that which Nature has let go, nor can a man be unhappy if he is nothing.

Seneca the Younger
What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It's for the superfluous we sweat.

Seneca the Younger
The physician cannot prescribe by letter... he must feel the pulse.

Seneca the Younger
How many other bodies besides [these comets] move in secret, never dawning upon human eyes? Nor is it for man that God has made all things.

Seneca the Younger
A disease also is farther on the road to being cured when it breaks forth from concealment and manifests its power.

Seneca the Younger
If one of these fires of unusual shape have made its appearance, everybody is eager to know what it is. Blind to all other celestial bodies, each asks about the newcomer; one is not quite sure whether to admire or to fear it. Persons there are who seek to inspire terror by forecasting its grave import.

Seneca the Younger
It is medicine, not scenery, for which a sick man must go a-searching.

Seneca the Younger
No man is so utterly dull and obtuse, with head so bent on Earth, as never to lift himself up and rise with all his soul to the contemplation of the starry heavens, especially when some fresh wonder shows a beacon-light in the sky.

Seneca the Younger
Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.

Seneca the Younger
Not even medicine can master incurable diseases.

Seneca the Younger
There is no easy way to the stars from the earth.
In Latin: Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.

Seneca the Younger
What physician can heal his patient on a flying visit?

Seneca the Younger
Nature does not turn out her work according to a single pattern; she prides herself upon her power of variation...

Seneca the Younger
Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to be, when our memory shall have perished. The world is a poor affair if it do not contain matter for investigation for the whole world in every age.

Seneca the Younger
The mathematical is, so to speak, a superficial science; it builds on a borrowed site, and the principles by aid of which it proceeds, are not its own...

Seneca the Younger
Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.

Seneca the Younger
Some day there will arise a man who will demonstrate in what region of the heavens comets take their way.

Seneca the Younger
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

Seneca the Younger
Besides, he who follows another not only discovers nothing but is not even investigating.

Seneca the Younger
God is near you, with you, and in you. Thus I say, Lucilius: there sits a holy spirit within us, a watcher of our right and wrong doing, and a guardian...

Seneca the Younger
Let tears flow of their own accord: their flowing is not inconsistent with inward peace and harmony.

Seneca the Younger
Virtue alone affords everlasting and peace-giving joy; even if some obstacle arise, it is but like an intervening cloud, which floats beneath the sun but never prevails against it.

Seneca the Younger
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Seneca the Younger
Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.

Seneca the Younger
He who, when he may, forbids not sin, commands it.

Seneca the Younger
A great step toward independence is a good humored stomach.

Seneca the Younger