Lucius Annaeus Seneca, commonly known as Seneca the Younger, was a Roman philosopher, statesman, and playwright born in approximately 4 BC. As a prominent Stoic philosopher, Seneca’s writings explored themes of ethics, virtue, and the pursuit of a meaningful life. His works, including “Letters from a Stoic” and “On the Shortness of Life,” offered timeless wisdom and practical guidance for living a virtuous and fulfilling existence. Seneca’s philosophical teachings emphasized the importance of self-control, resilience in the face of adversity, and the pursuit of inner tranquility. Beyond his philosophical pursuits, Seneca also served as a tutor and advisor to Emperor Nero, playing a role in shaping the governance of the Roman Empire. Seneca’s contributions to philosophy and his insights into the human experience continue to resonate with readers and inspire contemplation of the timeless questions of morality and the nature of existence.
Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The first step in a person’s salvation is knowledge of their sin.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Modesty forbids what the law does not.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
No man was ever wise by chance.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
No one is laughable who laughs at himself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Nothing is void of God, his work is everywhere his full of himself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
One must steer, not talk.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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 abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
What is true belongs to me!
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Whatever is well said by another, is mine.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man… It is more powerful than external circumstances.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Where fear is, happiness is not.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
While we are postponing, life speeds by.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
You learn to know a pilot in a storm.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The wish for healing has always been half of health.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is no delight in owning anything unshared.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Time discovers truth.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
True happiness is… to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
For greed all nature is too little.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Do everything as in the eye of another.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Every guilty person is his own hangman.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Every reign must submit to a greater reign.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Every sin is the result of a collaboration.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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 fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The heart is great which shows moderation in the midst of prosperity.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A great fortune is a great slavery.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A great mind becomes a great fortune.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A person’s fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
All art is but imitation of nature.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
In war there is no prize for runner-up.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
If you would judge, understand.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
If you wished to be loved, love.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Life is warfare.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Life, if well lived, is long enough.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
He who is brave is free.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
He has committed the crime who profits by it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
He that does good to another does good also to himself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
He who has great power should use it lightly.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I don’t consider myself bald, I’m just taller than my hair.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I don’t trust liberals, I trust conservatives.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
If you judge, investigate.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
