Top 200 Seneca Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 2 of 5

51. “We cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful.”

— Seneca

52. “Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms – you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.”

— Seneca

53. “Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement.”

— Seneca

54. “A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.”

— Seneca

55. “The sun also shines on the wicked.”

— Seneca

56. “Non est ad astra mollis e terris via” – “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

— Seneca

57. “We are unequal at birth, but are equal in death.”

— Seneca

58. “It’s not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.”

— Seneca

59. “A man’s past is forever set in stone. There.”

— Seneca

60. “The part of life we really live is small.′ For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.”

— Seneca

61. “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.”

— Seneca

62. “Some men shrink into dark corners, to such a degree that they see darkly by day.”

— Seneca

63. “But first we have to reject the life of pleasures; they make us soft and womanish; they are insistent in their demands, and what is more, require us to make insistent demands on fortune.”

— Seneca

64. “It is equally faulty to trust everyone and to trust no one.”

— Seneca

65. “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.”

— Seneca

66. “He lives badly who does not know how to die well.”

— Seneca

67. “If you want to determine the nature of anything, entrust it to time: when the sea is stormy, you can see nothing clearly.”

— Seneca

68. “Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the whole world.”

— Seneca

69. “Why are people so bitter, Paulinus? Nature has been good to us, not cruel. A life well spent can truly be a long life.”

— Seneca

70. “To come back to the question, the wise man, self-sufficient as he is, still desires to have a friend if only for the purpose of practising friendship and ensuring that those talents are not idle.”

— Seneca

71. “The good that could be given, can be removed.”

— Seneca

72. “No man can live a happy life, or even a supportable life, without the study of wisdom.”

— Seneca

73. “You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.”

— Seneca

74. “It will show us that ‘there’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so’, discipline the pleasures and the passions, and generally subordinate the body and emotions to the mind and soul.”

— Seneca

75. “All those who summon you to themselves, turn you away from your own self.”

— Seneca

76. “A few is enough for me; so is one; and so is none.”

— Seneca

77. “Si vis amari, ama.”

— Seneca

78. “Real wealth is poverty adjusted to the law of Nature.”

— Seneca

79. “There is no such thing as good or bad fortune for the individual; we live in common.”

— Seneca

80. “Each day... acquire something which will help you to face poverty, or death, and other ills as well. After running over a lot of different thoughts, pick out one to be digested thoroughly that day.”

— Seneca

81. “Natural desires are limited; those which spring from false opinions have nowhere to stop, for falsity has no point of termination.”

— Seneca

82. “Many a sight that is held a terror in the night-time, is turned to ridicule by day.”

— Seneca

83. “Present time is very brief, so brief, indeed, that to some there seems to be none; for it is always in motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it has come, and can no more brook delay than the firmament or the stars, whose ever unresting movement never lets them abide in the same track.”

— Seneca

84. “But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking with other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible.”

— Seneca

85. “Your good qualities should face inwards.”

— Seneca

86. “It is not enough if you do not shrink from work; ask for it.”

— Seneca

87. “That which annoys us does not necessarily injure us; but we are driven into wild rage by our luxurious lives, so that whatever does not answer our whims arouses our anger.”

— Seneca

88. “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.”

— Seneca

89. “The default mood of the busy man is misery. He lives a wretched existence. He walks with strangers in a world somewhere between love and hate.”

— Seneca

90. “And he has taught us not just to recognize but to obey the gods, and to accept all that happens exactly as if it were an order from above.”

— Seneca

91. “There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our character can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won’t make the crooked straight.”

— Seneca

92. “We are attracted by wealth, pleasures, good looks, political advancement and various other welcoming and enticing prospects: we are repelled by exertion, death, pain, disgrace and limited means. It follows that we need to train ourselves not to crave for the former and not to be afraid of the latter. Let us fight the battle the other way round – retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.”

— Seneca

93. “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.”

— Seneca

94. “And what is Bravery? It is the impregnable fortress for our mortal weakness; when a man has surrounded himself therewith, he can hold out free from anxiety during life’s siege; for he is using his own strength and his own weapons.”

— Seneca

95. “Virtue is divided into two parts – into contemplation of truth, and conduct.”

— Seneca

96. “Poverty brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth.”

— Seneca

97. “Joy is the goal which you desire to reach, but you are wandering from the path, if you expect to reach your goal while you are in the midst of riches and official titles – in other words, if you seek joy in the midst of cares, these objects for which you strive so eagerly, as if they would give you happiness and pleasure, are merely causes of grief.”

— Seneca

98. “It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more. What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man’s safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another’s and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already. You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, what is enough.”

— Seneca

99. “We let ourselves drift with every breeze; we are frightened at uncertainties, just as if they were certain.”

— Seneca

100. “After a shipwreck, sailors try the sea again. The banker is not frightened away from the forum by the swindler. If one were compelled to drop everything that caused trouble, life would soon grow dull amid sluggish idleness;.”

— Seneca