Top 40 Seneca the Elder Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”

— Seneca the Elder

Featured in: Hurt Quotes

2. “True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.”

— Seneca the Elder

3. “What you think about yourself is much more important than what others think of you.”

— Seneca the Elder

4. “If a man does not know what port he is steering for, no wind is favorable to him.”

— Seneca the Elder

5. “All art is an imitation of nature.”

— Seneca the Elder

6. “If you want to be loved, love.”

— Seneca the Elder

7. “The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back.”

— Seneca the Elder

8. “The road to learning by precept is long, but by example short and effective.”

— Seneca the Elder

9. “Let us be brave in the face of adversity.”

— Seneca the Elder

10. “It is not death we fear, but the thought of it.”

— Seneca the Elder

11. “Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.”

— Seneca the Elder

12. “No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.”

— Seneca the Elder

13. “Courage leads starward, fear toward death.”

— Seneca the Elder

14. “It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.”

— Seneca the Elder

15. “There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.”

— Seneca the Elder

16. “Unhappy is the man, though he rule the world, who doesn’t consider himself supremely blessed. In order to consider himself supremely blessed he must deeply understand that things could be much worse but aren’t! To not do that is to always be less happy than he could be.”

— Seneca the Elder

17. “We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?”

— Seneca the Elder

18. “It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and prefer things in measure to things in excess.”

— Seneca the Elder

19. “A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.”

— Seneca the Elder

20. “Failure changes for the better, success for the worse.”

— Seneca the Elder

21. “No man will swim ashore and take his baggage with him.”

— Seneca the Elder

22. “A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.”

— Seneca the Elder

23. “What is the proper limit for wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary; and, second, to have what is enough.”

— Seneca the Elder

24. “He who looks for advantage out of friendship strips it all of its nobility.”

— Seneca the Elder

25. “Add each day something to fortify you against poverty and death.”

— Seneca the Elder

26. “There’s some end at last for the man who follows a path; mere rambling is interminable.”

— Seneca the Elder

27. “To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.”

— Seneca the Elder

28. “Courage is a scorner of things which inspire fear.”

— Seneca the Elder

29. “Unhappy is the man, though he rule the world, who doesn’t consider himself supremely blessed.”

— Seneca the Elder

30. “No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.”

— Seneca the Elder

31. “It is not manly to turn one’s back on fortune.”

— Seneca the Elder

32. “The great soul surrenders itself to fate.”

— Seneca the Elder

33. “It is for the superfluous things of life that men sweat.”

— Seneca the Elder

34. “Malice drinks one-half of its own poison.”

— Seneca the Elder

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

— Seneca the Elder

36. “If you wish to fear nothing, consider that everything is to be feared.”

— Seneca the Elder

37. “The mind is slow to unlearn what it learnt early.”

— Seneca the Elder

38. “You can end love more easily than you can moderate it.”

— Seneca the Elder

39. “Know this, that he that is a friend to himself, is a friend to all men.”

— Seneca the Elder

40. “The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.”

— Seneca the Elder

41. “It is wrong not to give a hand to the fallen. This right is common to the whole human race.”

— Seneca the Elder

42. “Fortune reveres the brave, and overwhelms the cowardly.”

— Seneca the Elder

43. “We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.”

— Seneca the Elder

44. “For the great benefits of our being- our life, health, and reason-we look upon ourselves.”

— Seneca the Elder

45. “When in fear, it is safest to force the attack.”

— Seneca the Elder

46. “Nothing is our except time.”

— Seneca the Elder