Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quotes

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca; ca. 4 BC – 65 AD) 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.
Selected Quotes of Lucius Annaeus Seneca are:

1. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
    
2. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
    
3. Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
    
4. What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water?
    
5. True happines is to enjoy the present, without axious 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 gratest 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.
    
6. Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.
    
7. Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.
    
8. It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
    
9. It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity.
    
10. Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.
     
11. All cruelty springs from weakness.
     
12. If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.
     
13. It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.
     
14. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
     
15. It is a youthful failing to be unable to control one's impulses.
     
16. A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
     
17. The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can.
     
18. It should be our care not so much to live a long life as a satisfactory one.
     
19. Virtue runs no risk of becoming contemptible by being exposed to view, and it is better to be despised for simplicity than to be tormented by continual hypocrisy.
     
20. All art is an imitation of nature.
     
21. Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.
     
22. Avoid encounters with ignorant people, those who have never learned do not want to learn. You reproved that man more frankly than you ought and have rather offended than mended him. Consider not only the truth of what you say, but also if the man you are addressing can endure the truth. A good man accepts reproof gladly; the worse a man is the more bitterly he resents it.
     
23. Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.
     
24. 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?
     
25. That man lives badly who does not know how to die well.
     
26. It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.
     
27. It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
     
28. The cause of anger is the belief that we are injured; this belief, therefore, should not be lightly entertained. We ought not to fly into a rage even when the injury appears to be open and distinct: for some false things bear the semblance of truth. We should always allow some time to elapse, for time discloses the truth.
     
29. If any one is angry with you, meet his anger by returning benefits for it: a quarrel which is only taken up on one side falls to the ground: it takes two men to fight.
     
30. A good judge condemns wrongful acts, but does not hate them.
     
31. Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.
     
32. Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.
     
33. As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
     
34. Life's like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.
     
35. No man was ever wise by chance.
     
36. No one can wear a mask for very long.
     
37. Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable.
     
38. A man's as miserable as he thinks he is.
     
39. You learn to know a pilot in a storm.
     
40. Time discovers truth.
     
41. No one is laughable who laughs at himself.
     
42. I don't consider myself bald, I'm just taller than my hair.