Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quotes (141) Spiritual Sayings
About the Author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca; ca. 4 BC – AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. While he was later forced to commit suicide for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors, he may have been innocent. The early Christian Church was very favorably disposed towards Seneca and his writings, and the church leader Tertullian called him "our Seneca".
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“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. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Ad astra per aspera. (To the stars through difficulties.)”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“All cruelty springs from weakness.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency
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“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
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“Non est ad astra mollis e terris via" - "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“No man was ever wise by chance”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
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“Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. ”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
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“Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool ”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Essays, Volume I: de Providentia. de Constantia. de IRA. de Clementia
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“He who is brave is free”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“The sun also shines on the wicked.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Timendi causa est nescire -
Ignorance is the cause of fear.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions
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“Only time can heal what reason cannot.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“We learn not in the school, but in life.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
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“A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Essays, Volume III: de Beneficiis
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“Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“To wish to be well is a part of becoming well.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“He who spares the wicked injures the good.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
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“Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms--you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.”
-Seneca”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence on the future; not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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“Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“we cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“The best ideas are common property”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water?”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions
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“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Auditur et altera pars. (The other side shall be heard as well.)”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Medea
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“The time will come when diligent research over periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden...Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memories of us will have been effaced. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has something for every age to investigate. nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Naturalium Quaestionum Libri
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“We are mad, not only individually but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders, but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It does not matter how many books you have, but how good the books are which you have.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“We should every night call ourselves to an account;
What infirmity have I mastered today?
What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Beyond all things is the sea”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Men whose spirit has grown arrogant from the great favor of fortune have this most serious fault—those whom they have injured they also hate.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for crisis.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Throw aside all hindrances and give up your time to attaining a sound mind”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“While we wait for life, life passes”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but
we have been a long time on the way.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“If we could be satisfied with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“As Lucretius says: 'Thus ever from himself doth each man flee.' But what does he gain if he does not escape from himself? He ever follows himself and weighs upon himself as his own most burdensome companion. And so we ought to understand that what we struggle with is the fault, not of the places, but of ourselves”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
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“It is quality rather than quantity that matters.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“And what’s so bad about your being deprived of that?... All things seem unbearable to people who have become spoilt, who have become soft through a life of luxury, ailing more in the mind than they ever are in the body.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“if`you`live`in`harmony`with`nature you`will`never`be`poor,,
if`you`live`according `what`others`think,you`will`never`be`rich”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Gold tests with fire, woman with gold, man with woman”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“distringit librorum multitudo
(the abundance of books is distraction)”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Do not run hither and thither and distract yourself by changing your abode; for such restlessness is the sign of a disordered spirit.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“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 a fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient; and looking upon them only as sick and extravagant.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Dialogues and Letters
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“Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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“I am not a ‘wise man,’ nor . . . shall I ever be. And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked. It is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Let no one,' I say, 'who will make me no worthy return for such a loss rob me of a single day; let my mind be fixed upon itself, let it cultivate itself, let it busy itself with nothing outside, nothing that looks towards an umpire; let it love the tranquillity that is remote from public and private concern.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Life, if you know how to use it, is long; but…many, following no fixed aim, shifting and… dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“No good thing renders its possessor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss; nothing, however, is lost with less discomfort than that which, when lost, cannot be missed.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“We are indeed apt to ascribe certain faults to the place or to the time; but those faults will follow us, no matter how we change our place.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“How many are quite unworthy to see the light, and yet the day dawns.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“No prizefighter can go with high spirits into the strife if he has never been beaten black and blue; the only contestant who can confidently enter the lists is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent's fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary's charge, who has been downed in bloody but not it spirit, one who as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It's not because things are difficult that we don't dare; It's because we don't dare that things are difficult.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other
misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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“I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness. ”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
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“Lat, urbes constituit aetas: hora dissolvit: momento fit cinis: diu sylva.
An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them. In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Ab honesto virum bonum nihil deterret. (Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable.)-A Wrinkle in Time”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“The geat blessing of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“The highest good is a mind that scorns the happenings of chance, and rejoices only in virtue.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“Why do I not rather seek some real good - one which I could feel, not one which I could display? These things that draw the eyes of men, before which they halt, which they show to one another in wonder, outwardly glitter, but are worthless within.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“For manliness gains much strength by being challenged”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“There is no genius without a touch of madness.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“I have learned to be a friend to myself Great improvement this indeed Such a one can never be said to be alone for know that he who is a friend to himself is a friend to all mankind”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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“It's not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Hurry up and live.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“One hand washes the other.
(Manus Manum Lavat)”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets just like love or liquor.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It should be our care not so much to live a long life as a satisfactory one.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“As often as I have been amongst men, I have returned less a man.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is our conscience, not our pride, that has put doorkeepers at our doors.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Injustice never rules forever”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“The day which we fear is out last is buth the birthday of eternity”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“...it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
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“Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Conquest of Happiness
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“An unpopular rule is never long maintained.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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“that you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they ought, some before they ought and some which ought never to torture us at all. We heighten our pain either by presupposing a cause or anticipation”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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“The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Indeed the state of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but the most wretched are those who are toiling not even at their own preoccupations, but must regulate their sleep by another's, and their walk by another's pace, and obey orders in those freest of all things, loving and hating. If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“We should conduct ourselves not as if we ought to live for the body, but as if we could not live without it. Our too great love for it makes us restless with fears, burdens us with cares, and exposes us to insults.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“I am loath to call clemency what was, rather, the exhaustion of cruelty.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“The part of life we really live is small.' For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Nūllum magnum ingenium sine mixtūrā dēmentiae fuit
No great talent without an element of madness”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Religion is regarded by the ignorant as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
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“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.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“For we are not summoned according to the paristi register And besides there is no man so old as to make it sinful to expect another day. Now every day is another step in life.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“It is the sign of a weak mind to be unable to bear wealth.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“He will live ill who does not know how to die well”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Love of bustle is not industry.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Night brings our troubles to the light rather than banishes them.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“we deceive ourselves in thinking that death only follows life whereas it both goes before and will follow after it for where is the difference in not beginning or ceasing to exist the effect of both is not to be”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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“Believe me if you consult philosophy she will persuade you not to lit so long at your counting desk”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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“But when you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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“What difference does it make how much 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, having what is enough.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. [...] Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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“Although the sum and substance of the happy life is unalloyed freedom from care, and though the secret of such freedom is unshaken confidence... men gather together that which causes worry.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles 1-65
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