Top 200 Seneca Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 3 of 5

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

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

103. “You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.”

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

105. “It is too easy to side with the majority.”

— Seneca

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

— Seneca

107. “That which is enough is ready to our hands.”

— Seneca

108. “We should strive, not to live long, but to live rightly;.”

— Seneca

109. “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

110. “How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements – how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!”

— Seneca

111. “Homo res sacra homini.”

— Seneca

112. “Life is neither a Good nor an Evil; it is simply the place where good and evil exist.”

— Seneca

113. “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

114. “It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. New preoccupations take the place of the old, hope excites more hope and ambition more ambition. They do not look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it.”

— Seneca

115. “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

116. “It’s only when you’re breathing your last that the way you’ve spent your time will become apparent, “I accept the terms, and feel no dread of the coming judgment.”

— Seneca

117. “We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too.”

— Seneca

118. “Let us be brave in the face of hazards. Let us not fear wrongs, or wounds, or bonds, or poverty. And what is death? It is either the end, or a process of change.”

— Seneca

119. “We are born for it, but not with it. And even in the best of people, until you cultivate it there is only the material for virtue, not virtue itself.”

— Seneca

120. “What could be more foolish than a man’s being afraid of people’s words? My friend Demetrius has a nice way of putting things when he says, as he commonly does, that to him the utterances of the unenlightened are as noises emanating from the belly. ‘What difference does it make to me,’ he asks, ’whether their rumblings come from their upper or their nether regions?”

— Seneca

121. “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

122. “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

123. “He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware. It is the sign of an unstable mind not to be able to endure riches.”

— Seneca

124. “You’re like ordinary mortals in fearing everything, you’re like immortals in coveting everything.”

— Seneca

125. “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

126. “But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing.”

— Seneca

127. “Live with Chrysippus, live with Posidonius; they will give you a knowledge of man and the universe; they will tell you to be a practical philosopher: not just to entertain your listeners to a clever display of language, but to steel your spirit and brace it against whatever threatens.”

— Seneca

128. “At last, then, away with all these treacherous goods! They look better to those who hope for them than to those who have attained them.”

— Seneca

129. “Misfortune has a way of choosing some unprecedented means or other of impressing its power on those who might be said to have forgotten it.”

— Seneca

130. “Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action.”

— Seneca

131. “Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope,’ he says, ’and you will cease to fear.”

— Seneca

132. “I would not venture as yet to assure you, or even to hope, that there is nothing left in me needing to be changed.”

— Seneca

133. “No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life!”

— Seneca

134. “No man was ever wise by chance” “Associate.”

— Seneca

135. “This ideal figure seemed, from the way the Stoic lecturers talked, to have somehow become perfect in some sudden transformation long ago; gradual self-improvement was hardly discussed.”

— Seneca

136. “Most of my converse is with books.”

— Seneca

137. “When the strength of wine has become too great and has gained control over the mind, every lurking evil comes forth from its hiding-place.”

— Seneca

138. “We men torment ourselves over that which is to come as well as over that which is past... The present alone can make no man wretched.”

— Seneca

139. “No man ought to glory except in that which is his own.”

— Seneca

140. “Do you think that the man has any thought of mending his ways who counts over his vices as if they were virtues? Therefore, as far as possible, prove yourself guilty, hunt up charges against yourself; play the part, first of accuser, then of judge, last of intercessor. At times be harsh with yourself. Farewell.”

— Seneca

141. “Zeno of Elea has dismissed all such difficulties by introducing another; he declares that nothing exists.”

— Seneca

142. “We should not believe the lack of silver and gold to be proof of the simple life.”

— Seneca

143. “Good men are mutually helpful; for each gives practice to the other’s virtues and thus maintains wisdom at its proper level. Each needs someone with whom he may make comparisons and investigations.”

— Seneca

144. “I do not know any person with whom I should prefer you to associate rather than yourself.”

— Seneca

145. “Each man has a character of his own choosing; it is chance or fate that decides his choice of job.”

— Seneca

146. “No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it, or believes that living through many consulships is a great blessing.”

— Seneca

147. “For nature does not give a man virtue: the process of becoming a good man is an art.”

— Seneca

148. “It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.”

— Seneca

149. “Inwardly everything should be different but our outward face should conform with the crowd.”

— Seneca

150. “Virtue alone affords everlasting and peace-giving joy; even if some obstacle arise, it is but like an intervening cloud, which floats beneath the sun but never prevails against it. When will it be your lot to attain this joy? Thus far, you have indeed not been sluggish, but you must quicken your pace. Much toil remains; to confront it, you must yourself lavish all your waking hours, and all your efforts, if you wish the result to be accomplished.”

— Seneca