Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
Lucius Annaeus SenecaRead
A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
Interpretation
Controlling one's desires is essential for true freedom.
In this quote, Seneca emphasizes the importance of self-control over one's desires and appetites. He suggests that a person who governs their desires and impulses wisely is more liberated than one who succumbs to their whims, as true freedom is found in mastery over oneself rather than in the indulgence of uncontrolled appetites.
In practice
During a seminar on self-discipline, one might quote Seneca to illustrate the link between self-governance and personal freedom.
Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
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.
The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.
A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.
True happiness is... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.
No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to committ outrages.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by society than belief or disbelief in God.
A conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.
No charter of freedom will be worth looking at which does not ensure the same measure of freedom for the minorities as for the majority.
What is there astonishing in the death of a mortal? But we are grieved at his dying before his time. Are we sure that this was not his time? We do not know how to pick and choose what is good for our souls, or how to fix the limits of the life of man.
America is the only country ever founded on the printed word.
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