We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
Seneca The ElderRead
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fear often stems from our imagination rather than real threats.
This quote by Seneca The Elder highlights the tendency of humans to be overwhelmed by their fears and anxieties, which are often imaginary, rather than the actual dangers they face. It suggests that our mental and emotional suffering is frequently self-imposed, rooted in our imagination and perceptions, rather than based on concrete experiences of pain or harm.
Themes
FearImaginationRealitySufferingWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming fear, you might say, 'As Seneca the Elder said, we often suffer more from imagination than from reality.'
More from Seneca The Elder
All quotes →We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
Seneca The ElderRead
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 The ElderRead
The sun also shines on the wicked.
Seneca The ElderRead
Let us be brave in the face of adversity.
Seneca The ElderRead
The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.
Seneca The ElderRead
Similar quotes
People often remark that I'm pretty lucky. Luck is only important in so far as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you've got to have talent and know how to use it.
Frank SinatraRead
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
Charles SpurgeonRead
Meditation is enjoying oneself, just sitting silently doing nothing: happy, joyous without any reason, because all reasons come from outside. You meet a beautiful woman and you are happy, or you meet a beautiful man and you are happy - but the meditator is simply happy. His happiness has no reason from the outside world; his happiness wells up within himself.
RajneeshRead
What seems new is only new to us.
Pearl S. BuckRead
Acquire a government over your ideas, that they may come down when they are called, and depart when they are bidden.
Isaac WattsRead
I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations.
Bill WattersonRead