Top 200 Seneca Quotes (2024 Update)
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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. “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

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

— Seneca

59. “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

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

— Seneca

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

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

67. “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

68. “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

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

— Seneca

70. “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

71. “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

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

— Seneca

73. “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

74. “Your good qualities should face inwards.”

— Seneca

75. “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

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

— Seneca

77. “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

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

— Seneca

79. “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

80. “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

81. “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

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

— Seneca

83. “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

84. “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

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

— Seneca

86. “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

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

91. “What is the state of things, then? It is this: I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early. For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask. Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile.”

— Seneca

92. “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

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

95. “Si vis amari, ama.”

— Seneca

96. “There is a sequence about the creative process, and a work of genius is a synthesis of its individual features from which nothing can be subtracted without disaster.”

— Seneca

97. “Philosophy calls for plain living, but not for penance; and we may perfectly well be plain and neat at the same time. This is the mean of which I approve; our life should observe a happy medium between the ways of a sage and the ways of the world at large; all men should admire it, but they should understand it also. “Well.”

— Seneca

98. “The thought for today is one which I discovered in Epicurus; for I am wont to cross over even into the enemy’s camp – not as a deserter, but as a scout. He says: “Contented poverty is an honourable estate.” Indeed, if it be contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”

— Seneca

99. “A balanced combination of the two attitudes is what we want; the active man should be able to take things easily, while the man who is inclined towards repose should be capable of action. Ask nature: she will tell you that she made both day and night.”

— Seneca

100. “Homo res sacra homini.”

— Seneca