Top 500 Seneca the Younger Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “Unfamiliarity lends weight to misfortune, and there was never a man whose grief was not heightened by surprise.”

— Seneca the Younger

452. “To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.”

— Seneca the Younger

453. “Epicurus says, “gratitude is a virtue that has commonly profit annexed to it.” And where is the virtue that has not? But still the virtue is to be valued for itself, and not for the profit that attends it.”

— Seneca the Younger

454. “To forgive all is as inhuman as to forgive none.”

— Seneca the Younger

455. “The heart is great which shows moderation in the midst of prosperity.”

— Seneca the Younger

456. “Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots?”

— Seneca the Younger

457. “Be not dazzled by beauty, but look for those inward qualities which are lasting.”

— Seneca the Younger

458. “It is not how many books thou hast, but how good; careful reading profiteth, while that which is full of variety delighteth.”

— Seneca the Younger

459. “There’s one blessing only, the source and cornerstone of beatitude: confidence in self.”

— Seneca the Younger

460. “The greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution.”

— Seneca the Younger

461. “You roll my log, and I will roll yours.”

— Seneca the Younger

462. “Freedom can’t be bought for nothing. If you hold her precious, you must hold all else of little worth.”

— Seneca the Younger

463. “It is proof of a bad cause when it is applauded by the mob.”

— Seneca the Younger

464. “I would rather be sick than idle.”

— Seneca the Younger

465. “The mind is a matter over every kind of fortune; itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery.”

— Seneca the Younger

466. “It is sweet to mingle tears with tears; Griefs, where they wound in solitude, Wound more deeply.”

— Seneca the Younger

467. “Dead, we become the lumber of the world, And to that mass of matter shall be swept Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.”

— Seneca the Younger

468. “That grief is light which can take counsel.”

— Seneca the Younger

469. “Virtue is that perfect good, which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.”

— Seneca the Younger

470. “Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.”

— Seneca the Younger

471. “No work is of such merit as to instruct from a mere cursory perusal.”

— Seneca the Younger

472. “What you do for an ungrateful man is thrown away.”

— Seneca the Younger

473. “True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.”

— Seneca the Younger

474. “The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.”

— Seneca the Younger

475. “A crowd of fellow-sufferers is a miserable kind of comfort.”

— Seneca the Younger

476. “Sadness usually results from one of the following causes either when a man does not succeed, or is ashamed of his success.”

— Seneca the Younger

477. “No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.”

— Seneca the Younger

478. “Forgive that you may be forgiven.”

— Seneca the Younger

479. “Apples taste sweetest when they’re going.”

— Seneca the Younger

480. “Plato once wanted to punish one of his slaves and asked his nephew to do the actual whipping for he himself did not own his anger.”

— Seneca the Younger

481. “The voice of flattery affects us after it has ceased, just as after a concert men find some agreeable air ringing in their ears to the exclusion of all serious business.”

— Seneca the Younger

482. “Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.”

— Seneca the Younger

483. “Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.”

— Seneca the Younger

484. “Retirement without the love of letters is a living burial.”

— Seneca the Younger

485. “Pain, scorned by yonder gout-ridden wretch, endured by yonder dyspeptic in the midst of his dainties, borne bravely by the girl in travail. Slight thou art, if I can bear thee, short thou art if I cannot bear thee!”

— Seneca the Younger

486. “A well-governed appetite is a great part of liberty.”

— Seneca the Younger

487. “To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.”

— Seneca the Younger

488. “Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.”

— Seneca the Younger

489. “A great step toward independence is a good-humoured stomach.”

— Seneca the Younger

490. “There are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery.”

— Seneca the Younger

491. “There is nothing more despicable than an old man who has no other proof than his age to offer of his having lived long in the world.”

— Seneca the Younger

492. “A lesson that is never learned can never be too often taught.”

— Seneca the Younger

493. “Virtue with some is nothing but successful temerity.”

— Seneca the Younger

494. “He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.”

— Seneca the Younger

495. “Dignity increases more easily than it begins.”

— Seneca the Younger

496. “He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways.”

— Seneca the Younger

497. “We learn not for life but for the debating-room.”

— Seneca the Younger

498. “Such is the blindness, nay the insanity of mankind, that some men are driven to death by the fear of it.”

— Seneca the Younger

499. “Where silence is not allowed, what then is permissible?”

— Seneca the Younger

500. “Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts is therefore slow and tedious, whilst that of examples is summary and effectual.”

— Seneca the Younger