Seneca The Younger

What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.

Man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy-that he live in accordance with his own nature.

The true felicity of life is to be free from anxieties and pertubations; to understand and do our duties to God and man, and to enjoy the present without any serious dependence on the future.

Drunkenness does not create vice; it merely brings it into view.

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.

Reason wishes that the judgement it gives be just; anger wishes that the judgement it has given seem to be just.

The wish for healing has always been half of health.

Not he who has little, but he whose wishes more, is poor.

To wish to be well is a part of becoming well.

Eyes will not see when the heart wishes them to be blind.

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?

Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.

The wise man will not pardon any crime that ought to be punished, but he will accomplish, in a nobler way, all that is sought in pardoning. He will spare some and watch over some, because of their youth, and others on account of their ignorance. His clemency will not fall short of justice, but will fulfill it perfectly.

A man who suffers or stresses before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult

How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant are the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same.

Love of action is not industry.

Let us fight the battle-retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.

A great fortune is a great slavery.

We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a mutual love, and fitted us for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.

For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter, while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold.