Top 200 Seneca Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 5

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

— Seneca

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

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

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

— 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. “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

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

65. “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

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

68. “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

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

71. “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

72. “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

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

— Seneca

74. “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

75. “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

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

79. “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

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

83. “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

84. “Si vis amari, ama.”

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

87. “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

88. “Discuss the problem with Nature; she will tell you that she has created both day and night.”

— Seneca

89. “I commanded myself to live. There are times when even to live is an act of bravery.”

— Seneca

90. “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

91. “Your good qualities should face inwards.”

— Seneca

92. “Speak, and live, in this way; see to it that nothing keeps you down.”

— Seneca

93. “Wisdom is the perfect good of the human mind; philosophy is the love of wisdom, and the endeavor to attain it.”

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

95. “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

96. “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

97. “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

98. “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

99. “Are you really going to tell me that philosophy taught the world to use keys and bolts on doors – which was surely nothing but a signal for greed?”

— Seneca

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

— Seneca