For greed, the entire world is too little.
The cause of anger is the belief that we are injured; this belief, therefore, should not be lightly entertained… We should always allow some time to elapse, for time discloses the truth.
You are mortal in everything you fear and immortal in everything you desire.
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
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.
All cruelty springs from weakness.
― Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Non est ad astra mollis e terris via - There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire
― On the Shortness of Life
Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms -- you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.
The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.
― Natural Questions
It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.
― The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
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
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.
He who is brave is free.
No man was ever wise by chance.
If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.
― Letters from a Stoic
They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.
― On the Shortness of Life
Associate with people who are likely to improve you.
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
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.
Only time can heal what reason cannot.
Timendi causa est nescire -
Ignorance is the cause of fear.
― Natural Questions
Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.
Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.
Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool
― Moral Essays: Volume I De Providentia. De Constantia. De Ira. De Clementia
For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.
― The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.
― Letters from a Stoic
If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich.
― Letters from a Stoic
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
The sun also shines on the wicked.
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand.
People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.
― On the Shortness of Life
Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant.
Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.
We learn not in the school, but in life.
A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.
― Moral Essays: Volume III
Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.
― On the Shortness of Life
Life is long, if you know how to use it.
― On the Shortness of Life
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
We should every night call ourselves to an account;
What infirmity have I mastered today?
What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.
There is no genius without a touch of madness.
Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.
To wish to be well is a part of becoming well.
I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.
It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.
― Letters from a Stoic
While we wait for life, life passes.
It does not matter how many books you have, but how good the books are which you have.
He who spares the wicked injures the good.
The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.
― On the Shortness of Life
It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.
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
But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.
― On the Shortness of Life
It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
Regard [a friend] as loyal, and you will make him loyal.
― Letters from a Stoic
You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.
― On the Shortness of Life
Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.
He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.
― On Anger
It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.
Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.
― Letters from a Stoic
Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope … and you will cease to fear.’ … Widely different [as fear and hope] are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope … both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present.
― Letters from a Stoic
The part of life we really live is small.' For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.
Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and nothing need arouse one's irritation so long as one doesn't make it bigger than it is by getting irritated.
― Letters from a Stoic
You should … live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.
― Letters from a Stoic
What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying 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
The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.
Auditur et altera pars. (The other side shall be heard as well.)
― Medea
...it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it.
― On the Shortness of Life
True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence on the future; not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient.
The best ideas are common property.
Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.
― On the Shortness of Life
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.
But when you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.
― Letters from a Stoic
To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.
What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water?
― Natural Questions
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.
Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement.
To win true freeedom you must be a slave to philosophy.
― Letters from a Stoic
Beyond all things is the sea.
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity
― Dialogues and Letters
We cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do.
― Letters from a Stoic
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.
When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
― Epistles 1-65
Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.
And this, too, affords no small occasion for anxieties - if you are bent on assuming a pose and never reveal yourself to anyone frankly, in the fashion of many who live a false life that is all made up for show; for it is torturous to be constantly watching oneself and be fearful of being caught out of our usual role. And we are never free from concern if we think that every time anyone looks at us he is always taking-our measure; for many things happen that strip off our pretence against our will, and, though all this attention to self is successful, yet the life of those who live under a mask cannot be happy and without anxiety. But how much pleasure there is in simplicity that is pure, in itself unadorned, and veils no part of its character!{PlainDealer+} Yet even such a life as this does run some risk of scorn, if everything lies open to everybody; for there are those who disdain whatever has become too familiar. But neither does virtue run any risk of being despised when she is brought close to the eyes, and it is better to be scorned by reason of simplicity than tortured by perpetual pretence.
― The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.
― Letters from a Stoic
Gold tests with fire, woman with gold, man with woman.
For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.
― Letters from a Stoic
If we could be satisfied with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago.
― Epistles 1-65
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?
Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one.
― Letters from a Stoic
The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.
As far as I am concerned, I know that I have lost not wealth but distractions. The body’s needs are few: it wants to be free from cold, to banish hunger and thirst with nourishment; if we long for anything more we are exerting ourselves to serve our vices, not our needs.
― On the Shortness of Life
Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs.
― On the Shortness of Life
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for crisis.
Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining?
― On the Shortness of Life
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only for how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.
To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
― Letters from a Stoic
What really ruins our character is the fact that none of us looks back over his life.
― Letters from a Stoic
It's not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.
A woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body.
― Letters from a Stoic
Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
What fortune has made yours is not your own.
― Letters from a Stoic
We must go for walks out of doors, so that the mind can be strengthened and invigorated by a clear sky and plenty of fresh air. At times it will acquire fresh energy from a journey by carriage and a change of scene, or from socializing and drinking freely. Occasionally we should even come to the point of intoxication, sinking into drink but not being totally flooded by it; for it does wash away cares, and stirs the mind to its depths, and heals sorrow just as it heals certain diseases.
― On the Shortness of Life
Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
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
It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and--what will perhaps make you wonder more--it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.
No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.
For it is dangerous to attach one's self to the crowd in front, and so long as each one of us is more willing to trust another than to judge for himself, we never show any judgement in the matter of living, but always a blind trust, and a mistake that has been passed on from hand to hand finally involves us and works our destruction. It is the example of other people that is our undoing; let us merely separate ourselves from the crowd, and we shall be made whole. But as it is, the populace,, defending its own iniquity, pits itself against reason. And so we see the same thing happening that happens at the elections, where, when the fickle breeze of popular favour has shifted, the very same persons who chose the praetors wonder that those praetors were chosen.
We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.
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
The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.
― Letters from a Stoic
And what’s so bad about your being deprived of that?... All things seem unbearable to people who have become spoilt, who have become soft through a life of luxury, ailing more in the mind than they ever are in the body.
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
Throw aside all hindrances and give up your time to attaining a sound mind.
People who know no self-restraint lead stormy and disordered lives, passing their time in a state of fear commensurate with the injuries they do to others, never able to relax.
― Letters from a Stoic
It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.
No one could endure lasting adversity if it continued to have the same force as when it first hit us. We are all tied to Fortune, some by a loose and golden chain, and others by a tight one of baser metal: but what does it matter? We are all held in the same captivity, and those who have bound others are themselves in bonds - unless you think perhaps that the left-hand chain is lighter. One man is bound by high office, another by wealth; good birth weighs down some, and a humble origin others; some bow under the rule of other men and some under their own; some are restricted to one place by exile, others by priesthoods: all life is a servitude.
So you have to get used to your circumstances, complain about them as little as possible, and grasp whatever advantage they have to offer: no condition is so bitter that a stable mind cannot find some consolation in it.
― On the Shortness of Life
Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.
― Letters from a Stoic
Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.
― Letters from a Stoic
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.
― Letters from a Stoic
While we are postponing, life speeds by.
One hand washes the other.
(Manus Manum Lavat)
For the only safe harbour in this life's tossing, troubled sea is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring and to stand ready and confident, squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever fortune hurls at us.
― Letters from a Stoic
Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.
― The Conquest of Happiness
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
Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.
― Letters from a Stoic
Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.
If what you have seems insufficient to you, then though you possess the world, you will yet be miserable.
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
― Letters from a Stoic
I will storm the gods, and shake the universe.
― Medea
Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.
The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what is in Fortune's control and abandoning what lies in yours.
I am not a ‘wise man,’ nor . . . shall I ever be. And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked. It is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes.
And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles, he has not lived long – he has existed long. For what if you should think that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.
― On the Shortness of Life
Hurry up and live.
Men whose spirit has grown arrogant from the great favor of fortune have this most serious fault—those whom they have injured they also hate.
― Epistles 1-65
Ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes viros.
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
We must indulge the mind and from time to time allow it the leisure which is its food and strength.
― On the Shortness of Life
So you must match time’s swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow.
― On the Shortness of Life
Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets just like love or liquor.
What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.
― Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium: Latin Text
Lat, urbes constituit aetas: hora dissolvit: momento fit cinis: diu sylva.
An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them. In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.
Let this variety of ideas be set before him; he will choose if he can; if not, he will remain in doubt. Only the fools are certain and assured. For if he embraces Xenophon's and Plato's opinions by his own reasoning, they will no longer be theirs, they will be his. He who follows another follows nothing. He finds nothing; indeed he seeks nothing. We are not under a king; let each one claim his own freedom [Seneca]. Let him know that he knows, at least. He must imbibe their ways of thinking, not learn their precepts. And let him boldly forget, if he wants, where he got them, but let him know how to make them his own. Truth and reason are common to everyone, and no more belong to the man who first spoke them than to the man who says them later. It is no more according to Plato than according to me, since he and I understand and see it the same way. The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work of his own, to wit, his judgment. His education, work, and study aim only at forming this.
distringit librorum multitudo
(the abundance of books is distraction)
Can you no longer see a road to freedom? It's right in front of you. You need only turn over your wrists.
You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.
All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re traveling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.
― Letters from a Stoic
I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness.
― The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.
― Letters from a Stoic
Religion is regarded by the ignorant as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned.
Fire tests gold and adversity tests the brave.
When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
When a mind is impressionable and has none too firm a hold on what is right, it must be rescued from the crowd: it is so easy for it to go over to the majority.
― Letters from a Stoic
All things that are still to come lie in uncertainty; live straightway!
― On the Shortness of Life
You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.
At times we ought to drink even to intoxication, not so as to drown, but merely to dip ourselves in wine, for wine washes away troubles and dislodges them from the depths of the mind and acts as a remedy to sorrow as it does to some diseases. The inventor of wine is called Liber, not from the license which he gives to our tongues but because he liberates the mind from the bondage of cares and emancipates it, animates it and renders it more daring in all that it attempts.
So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not Ill-supplied but wasteful of it.
― On the Shortness of Life
A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient; nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in a fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient; and looking upon them only as sick and extravagant.
To expect punishment is to suffer it; and to earn it is to expect it.
― Letters from a Stoic
People are delighted to accept pensions and gratuities, for which they hire out their labour or their support or their services. But nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But if death threatens these same people, you will see them praying to their doctors; if they are in fear of capital punishment, you will see them prepared to spend their all to stay alive.
― On the Shortness of Life
Words need to be sown like seeds. No matter how tiny a seed may be, when in lands in the right sort of ground it unfolds its strength and from being minute expands and grows to a massive size.
― Letters from a Stoic
My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application—not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech—and learn them so well that words become works. No one to my mind lets humanity down quite so much as those who study philosophy as if it were a sort of commercial skill and then proceed to live in a quite different manner from the way they tell other people to live.
― Letters from a Stoic
There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.
Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner. 3. Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction.
― Letters from a Stoic
No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best.
― Epistles 1-65
How many are quite unworthy to see the light, and yet the day dawns.
Remember that all we have is on loan from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, we should love all our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.
Believe me, it is the sign of a great man, and one who is above human error, not to allow his time to be frittered away: he has the longest possible life simply because whatever time was available he devoted entirely to himself.
― On the Shortness of Life
Envy of other people shows how they are unhappy. Their continual attention to others behavior shows how they are boring.