Seneca the Younger Quotes

130 Sourced Quotes

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Seneca the Younger
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.

Seneca the Younger
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

Seneca the Younger
A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.

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
Friendship is always helpful, but love sometimes even does harm.

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
Mercy often means giving death, not life.

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

Seneca the Younger
All art is but imitation of nature.

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

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

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
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
If you are wise, mingle these two elements: do not hope without despair, or despair without hope.

Seneca the Younger
Anyone can stop a man's life, but no one his death; a thousand doors open on to it.

Seneca the Younger
That man lives badly who does not know how to die well.

Seneca the Younger
We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples? There are no limits to our greed, none to our cruelty. And as long as such crimes are committed by stealth and by individuals, they are less harmful and less portentous; but cruelties are practiced in accordance with acts of senate and popular assembly, and the public is bidden to do that which is forbidden to the individual.

Seneca the Younger
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.

Seneca the Younger
The old Romans had a custom which survived even into my lifetime. They would add to the opening words of a letter: "If you are well, it is well; I also am well." Persons like ourselves would do well to say. "If you are studying philosophy, it is well." For this is just what "being well" means. Without philosophy the mind is sickly.

Seneca the Younger
A great step towards independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.

Seneca the Younger
The vulgar bark at men of mark, as dogs bark at strangers.

Seneca the Younger
We are not children twice, as the saying is, but for ever; the difference is that we play bigger games.

Seneca the Younger
It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

Seneca the Younger
Impurity is caused by attitude, not events.

Seneca the Younger
Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.

Seneca the Younger
'Tis the first art of kings, the power to suffer hate.

Seneca the Younger
I do not trust my eyes to tell me what a man is: I have a better and more trustworthy light by which I can distinguish what is true from what is false: let the mind find out what is good for the mind.

Seneca the Younger
If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.

Seneca the Younger
Man's highest good is attained if he has fulfilled the good for which nature designed him at birth. And what is it which this reason demands of him? The easiest thing in the world — to live in accordance with his nature. But this has turned into a hard task by the general madness of mankind.

Seneca the Younger