Seneca

For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter, while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold.

There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.

I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may benefit them.

Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.

Refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear.

Man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy—that he live in accordance with his own nature.

There is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn’t just fall to a person’s lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn’t go to anyone other than oneself to find her.

Everything hangs on one’s thinking.

Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: " Is this the condition that I feared?"

Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: Not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always to take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock.

If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.

We should live as if we were in public view, and think, too, as if someone could peer into the inmost recesses of our hearts—which someone can!

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

Retire into yourself as much as possible. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one. People learn as they teach.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.

If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people's opinions, you will never be rich.

The place one's in, though, doesn't make any contribution to peace of mind: it's the spirit that makes everything agreeable to oneself.

Away with the world’s opinion of you—it’s always unsettled and divided.

Choose for yourself a moral hero, whose life, conversation, and expressive face all please you, then picture him to yourself at all times as your protector, and as your ethical pattern. We all need someone whose example can regulate our characters.

The philosopher: he alone knows how to live for himself. He is the one, in fact, who knows the fundamental thing: how to live.

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit.

Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers.

This is the clearest sign of a mind that lacks awareness: it constantly changes its identity. In my view, there is nothing more shameful than a mind that is inconsistent with itself. Consider it a great accomplishment to act as one person. But only the wise play a single role. The rest of us wear many masks. One minute we will seem frugal and serious, the next moment wasteful and silly. We keep changing our characters, taking on a new role that is its opposite. You should, then, demand this of yourself: play a single character until the curtain falls.

No man of exalted gifts is pleased with anything low and inferior. A vision of great achievement calls out to him and lifts him up.

There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.

“Just where death is expecting you is something we cannot know; so, for your part, expect him everywhere.”

Disaster is virtue’s opportunity.

A person who just thinks of his contemporaries is born for only a few. Many thousands of years will come, and many thousands of peoples: look toward them too.

To govern was to serve, not to rule.

It is a rough road that leads to the path of greatness.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

You cannot, I repeat, successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time.

It is the mark of a great mind to rise above insults; the most humiliating kind of revenge is to treat your adversary as not worth taking revenge upon. Many have taken slight injuries too deeply to heart in the course of punishing them. The great and noble are those who, like a lordly beast, listen unmoved to the barking of little dogs

Life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is whole.

Philosophy did not find Plato already a nobleman, it made him one.

Death: There’s nothing bad about it at all except the thing that comes before it—the fear of it.

For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter, while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold.

The greater part of progress is the desire to progress.

Of all the people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only they truly live. Not satisfied to merely keep good watch over their own days, they annex every age to their own. All the harvest of the past is added to their store. Only an ingrate would fail to see that these great architects of venerable thoughts were born for us and have designed a way of life for us.

As it is with a play, so it is with life—what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is.

Philosophy takes as her aim the state of happiness…she shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. She strips men's minds of empty thinking, bestows a greatness that is solid and administers a check to greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show; she sees that we are left no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated.

Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers.

I am telling you to be a slow-speaking person.

How can a thing possibly govern others when it cannot be governed itself?

When some state or other offered Alexander a part of its territory and half of all its property he told them that he hadn't come to Asia with the intention of accepting whatever they cared to give him, but of letting them keep whatever he chose to leave them.' Philosophy, likewise, tells all other occupations: It's not my intention to accept whatever time is leftover from you; you shall have, instead, what I reject.' Give your whole mind to her.

Be harsh with yourself at times.

A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.

So let all your activity be directed to some object, let it have some end in view.

See what daily exercise does for one.

No one should feel pride in anything that is not his own.

You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.

Drunkenness is nothing but a self-induced state of insanity.

How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant are the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same.

Every journey has an end.

Mark off, I tell you, and review the days of your life: you will see that very few—the useless remnants—have been left to you.

Make progress, and, before all else, try hard to be consistent with yourself.

The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort.

The wise man…lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything.

There is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn't just fall to a person's lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her.

The greatest portion of peace of mind is doing nothing wrong. Those who lack self-control live disoriented and disturbed lives.

It is the mark of a great mind to rise above insults; the most humiliating kind of revenge is to treat your adversary as not worth taking revenge upon. Many have taken slight injuries too deeply to heart in the course of punishing them. The great and noble are those who, like a lordly beast, listen unmoved to the barking of little dogs.

The wise man then followed a simple way of life—which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can.

We should live as if we were in public view, and think, too, as if someone could peer into the inmost recesses of our hearts—which someone can!

Just where death is expecting you is something we cannot know; so, for your part, expect him everywhere.

You can only acquire it successfully if you cease to feel any sense of shame.

Cherish some man of great character, and keep him always in mind. Then live as if he were watching you, and order all your actions as if he saw them.

Everything hangs on one's thinking.

What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then.

Don’t demand that I should be equal to the best, but better than the worst. It’s enough for me if, every day, I reduce the number of my vices and correct my mistakes.

To want simply what is enough nowadays suggests to people primitiveness and squalor.

These individuals have riches just as we say that we "have a fever" when really the fever has us.

You want to live—but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying—and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?

Life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is whole.” “Refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear.

So there you have, my dear Serenus, the means of preserving your tranquility, the means of restoring it, and the means of resisting the faults that creep up on you unawares. But be sure of this, that none of them is strong enough for those who want to preserve such a fragile thing, unless the wavering mind is surrounded by attentive and unceasing care.

Philosophy takes as her aim the state of happiness…she shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. She strips men's minds of empty thinking, bestows a greatness that is solid and administers a check to greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show; she sees that we are left no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated.

Love of bustle is not industry.

Death: There's nothing bad about it at all except the thing that comes before it—the fear of it.

Philosophy's power to blunt all the blows of circumstance is beyond belief.

Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness.

A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.

Whatever is implanted and inborn can be reduced with practice but not overcome. Some of those who appear in public most often will break into a sweat, just as if they were tired and overheated; some tremble in the knees when they are about to give a speech; in some cases teeth chatter, tongues falter, lips quiver. Neither training nor experience will ever get rid of these things. Rather, Nature is exerting its strength to admonish even the strongest among us—each through his particular flaws.

Shall I tell you what philosophy holds out to humanity? Counsel…You are called in to help the unhappy.

See what daily exercise does for one.

There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.

A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.

A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation...you have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it.

You cannot, I repeat, successfully acquire it and preserve your modesty at the same time.

What is required is not a lot of words, but effectual ones.

God is near you, is with you, is inside you.

The wise man then followed a simple way of life—which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can.

Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness.

What view is one likely to take of the state of a person's mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no constraint?

To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind.

Philosophy is good advice, and no one gives good advice at the top of his lungs.

We must give up many things to which we are addicted, considering them to be good. Otherwise, courage will vanish, which should continually test itself. Greatness of soul will be lost, which can’t stand out unless it disdains as petty what the mob regards as most desirable.

When one has lost a friend one's eyes should be neither dry nor streaming. Tears, yes, there should be, but not lamentation.