Famous Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quotations

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"Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?"
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"The greatest remedy for anger is delay."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"While we are postponing, life speeds by."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"There is no great genius without some touch of madness."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"As long as you live, keep learning how to live."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Love in its essence is spiritual fire."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Success consecrates the most offensive crimes."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"One crime has to be concealed by another."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Nothing is void of God, his work is everywhere his full of himself."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"I don't consider myself bald, I'm just taller than my hair."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Crime when it succeeds is called virtue."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"There is no delight in owning anything unshared."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"For greed all nature is too little."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Every guilty person is his own hangman."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"He who is brave is free."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?"
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"If you would judge, understand."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"If you judge, investigate."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"All cruelty springs from weakness."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"All art is but imitation of nature."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"He has committed the crime who profits by it."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can't find."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Modesty forbids what the law does not."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"...a sword never kills anybody it's a tool in the killer's hand. From Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Letters to Lucilius on Morals, Letter 87, c.63-65"
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A great mind becomes a great fortune."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A great fortune is a great slavery."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A great step toward independence is a good humored stomach."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A man's as miserable as he thinks he is."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A person's fears are lighter when the danger is at hand."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party there is no battle unless there be two."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"All things are cause for either laughter or weeping."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"An action will not be right unless the will be right for from thence is the action derived. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind be right for from thence comes the will."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Anyone can stop a man's life, but no one his death a thousand doors open on to it. - Phoenissae"
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"As is a tale, so is life not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"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."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune all these are names of the one and selfsame God."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Do everything as in the eye of another."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness. - Epistulae ad Lucilium"
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca


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