Seneca the Younger Quotes

130 Sourced Quotes

The pilot... who has been able to say, "Neptune, you shall never sink this ship except on an even keel," has fulfilled the requirements of his art.

Seneca the Younger
Death is a release from and an end of all pains: beyond it our sufferings cannot extend: it restores us to the peaceful rest in which we lay before we were born. If anyone pities the dead, he ought also to pity those who have not been born.

Seneca the Younger
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca the Younger
Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

Seneca the Younger
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
Our feeling about every obligation depends in each case upon the spirit in which the benefit is conferred; we weigh not the bulk of the gift, but the quality of the good-will which prompted it.

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
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

Seneca the Younger
Eternal law has arranged nothing better than this, that it has given us one way in to life, but many ways out.

Seneca the Younger
No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.

Seneca the Younger
What then? Shall I not follow in the footsteps of my predecessors? I shall indeed use the old road, but if I find one that makes a shorter cut and is smoother to travel, I shall open the new road. Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides. Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left even for posterity to discover.

Seneca the Younger
Behold a thing worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with adversity.

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

Seneca the Younger
Teaching by precept is a long road, but short and beneficial is the way by example.

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

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

Seneca the Younger