Seneca Quotes

“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.” That was indeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.

No man is more fragile than another: no man more certain than another of tomorrow.

fidei acerrimus exactor est perfidus

Do battle with yourself: if you have the will to conquer anger, it cannot conquer you.

Is it for this purpose that we are strong—that we may have light burdens to bear?

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

So near at hand is freedom, and is anyone still a slave?

Whatever has been long anticipated comes as a lighter blow.

Nothing is so certain as that the evils of idleness can be shaken off by hard work.

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long this privilege will be ours.

He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a man who is alive.

All vices sink into our whole being, if we do not crush them before they gain a footing; and in like manner these sad, pitiable, and discordant feelings end by feeding upon their own bitterness, until the unhappy mind takes a sort of morbid delight in grief... In like manner, wounds heal easily when the blood is fresh upon them: they can then be cleared out and brought to the surface, and admit of being probed by the finger: when disease has turned them into malignant ulcers, their cure is more difficult.

Next, if you choose to view its results and the mischief that it does, no plague has cost the human race more dear