Episode Summary
These Powerful Seneca Quotes will help you strengthen your mind. Stoicism reminds us to live in the moment & to focus on what we can control.
Who was Seneca?
Seneca, in full Lucius Annaeus Seneca, by name Seneca the Younger, (born c. 4 bce, Corduba (now Córdoba), Spain—died 65 ce, Rome [Italy]), Roman philosopher, statesman, orator, and tragedian. He was Rome’s leading intellectual figure in the mid-1st century ce and was virtual ruler with his friends of the Roman world between 54 and 62, during the first phase of Emperor, Nero’s reign.
What was the nature of Seneca’s philosophy?
Seneca’s wisdom and these quotes will help you gain perspective on happiness, the power of reflection & life in general. If you haven’t heard of Seneca, then perhaps you have heard of men like Robert Greene, Ryan Holiday, and Elon Musk. These successful individuals have discussed how much Seneca has influenced and inspired them in their professional achievements.
Life Changing Seneca Quotes
Embrace Your Mortality with Memento Mori
What is Memento Mori?
the ancient practice of reflection on mortality that goes back to Socrates, who said that the proper practice of philosophy is “about nothing else but dying and being dead.” In early Buddhist texts, a prominent term is maraṇasati, which translates as ‘remember death.’ Some Sufis have been called the “people of the graves,” because of their practice of frequenting graveyards to ponder on death and one’s mortality.
Best Seneca Quotes
1. “Life, if well lived, is long enough.”
― Seneca
2. “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
― Seneca
3. “Love in its essence is spiritual fire.”
― Seneca
Seneca Quotes on Acceptance
4. “Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.”
― Seneca
5. “Man is affected not by events but by the view he takes of them.”
― Seneca
6. “How does it help… to make troubles heavier by bemoaning them?”
― Seneca
7. “Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.”
― Seneca
8. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
― Seneca
9. “Time heals what reason cannot.”
― Seneca
Seneca Quotes on Reflection
10. “Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.” ― Seneca
11. “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.” ― Seneca
12. “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.”
― Seneca
13. “Remember that pain has this most excellent quality. If prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot be prolonged.”
― Seneca
Seneca Quotes on Life
14. “Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
— Seneca
15. “As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
— Seneca
16. “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
― Seneca
17. “Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters..”
― Seneca
18. “While we wait for life, life passes.”
― Seneca
19. “We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.”
― Seneca
20. “Every night before going to sleep, we must ask ourselves: what weakness did I overcome today? What virtue did I acquire?”
— Seneca
21. “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
Quotes on Leadership
22. “Throw me to the wolves and I will return leading the pack.”
— Seneca
23. “If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
― Seneca
24. “Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
― Seneca
25. “To wish to progress is the largest part of progress.”
― Seneca
26. “Besides, he who is feared, fears also; no one has been able to arouse terror and live in peace of mind.”
― Seneca
27. “It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.”
― Seneca
Seneca Quotes on Perseverance
28. “Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.”
― Seneca
29. “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.”
― Seneca
31. “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
— Seneca
33. “A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” ― Seneca
34. “So you must match time’s swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow.”
― Seneca
35. “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
― Seneca
36. “The good things of prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.”
― Seneca
Seneca Quotes on Judgement
37. “Every guilty person is his own hangman.”
― Seneca
38. “All cruelty springs from weakness.”
— Seneca
39. “Once again prosperous and successful crime goes by the name of virtue; good men obey the bad, might is right and fear oppresses law.”
― Seneca
40. “A good judge condemns wrongful acts, but does not hate them.”
― Seneca
41. “I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.”
― Seneca
42. “Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.”
― Seneca
43. “Regard a friend as loyal, and you will make him loyal.”
― Seneca
44. “One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.”
― Seneca
45. “It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.”
― Seneca
46. “Friendship is always helpful, but love sometimes even does harm”
― Seneca
Seneca Quotes on Fear
47. “A person’s fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.”
― Seneca
48. “You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire” ― Seneca
49. “Worse than war is the very fear of war.”
― Seneca
50. “Remember, however, before all else, to strip things of all that disturbs and confuses, and to see what each is at the bottom; you will then comprehend that they contain nothing fearful except the actual fear.”
― Seneca
51. “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
– Seneca
52. “Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.”
– Seneca
53. “Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms — you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.”
– Seneca
54. “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
55. “Silence is a lesson learned through life’s many sufferings.”
– Seneca
56. “He who is brave is free.”
– Seneca
57. “If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
– Seneca
58. “No man was ever wise by chance.”
– Seneca
59. “Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.”
– Seneca
60. “They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.” – Seneca
61. “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.”
–Seneca
62. “It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.”
Seneca
63. “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.”
Seneca
64. “Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable.”
Seneca
65. “We must go for walks out of doors, so that the mind can be strengthened and invigorated by a clear sky and plenty of fresh air. At times it will acquire fresh energy from a journey by carriage and a change of scene, or from socializing and drinking freely. Occasionally we should even come to the point of intoxication, sinking into drink but not being totally flooded by it; for it does wash away cares, and stirs the mind to its depths, and heals sorrow just as it heals certain diseases.”
Seneca
66. “Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.”
Seneca
67. “The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.”
Seneca
68. “What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”
Seneca
69. “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.”
Seneca
70. “Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.”
Seneca
71. “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?”
Seneca
72. “Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement.”
Seneca
73. “The sun also shines on the wicked.”
Seneca
74. “The part of life we really live is small. For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.”
Seneca
75. “Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.”
Seneca
76. “What really ruins our character is the fact that none of us looks back over his life.”
Seneca
77. “Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.”
Seneca
78. “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.”
Seneca
79. “Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.”
Seneca
80. “The abundance of books is distraction.”
Seneca
81. “Courage leads to heaven; fear leads to death.”
Seneca
82. “Economy is too late when you are at the bottom of your purse.”
Seneca
83. “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.”
Seneca
84. “For greed all nature is too little.”
Seneca
85. “He that does good to another does good also to himself.”
Seneca
86. “The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.”
Seneca
87. “Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.”
Seneca
88. “There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.”
Seneca
89. “Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant.”
Seneca
90. “A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.”
Seneca
91. “It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.”
Seneca
92. “Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.”
Seneca
93. “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
Seneca
94. “It does not matter how many books you have, but how good are the books which you have.”
Seneca
95. “Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.”
Seneca
96. “If we could be satisfied with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago.”
Seneca
97. “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”
Seneca
98. “For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.”
Seneca
99. “There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.”
Seneca
100. “Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.”
Seneca
101. “You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.”
Seneca
102. “No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best.”
Seneca
103. “Everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things, since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.”
Seneca
104. “No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity.”
Seneca
105. “We cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful.”
Seneca
106. “If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according to what others think, you will never be rich.”
Seneca
107. “It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”
Seneca
108. “A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.”
Seneca
109. “No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.”
Seneca
1110. “It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and ― what will perhaps make you wonder more ― it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.”
Seneca
111. “The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.”
Seneca
112. “To expect punishment is to suffer it; and to earn it is to expect it.”
Seneca
113. “I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.”
Seneca
114. “To err is human, but to persist in the mistake is diabolical.”
Seneca
115. “A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.”
Seneca
116. “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
Seneca
117. “As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
Seneca
118. “The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.”
Seneca
119. “There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.”
Seneca
120. “People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”
Seneca
121. “The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what is in Fortune’s control and abandoning what lies in yours.”
Seneca
122. “Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and nothing need arouse one’s irritation so long as one doesn’t make it bigger than it is by getting irritated.”
Seneca
123. “It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not Ill-supplied but wasteful of it.”
Seneca
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