Quotes from Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.

I don't trust liberals, I trust conservatives.

A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

No man was ever wise by chance.

If you would judge, understand.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.

The first step in a person's salvation is knowledge of their sin.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.

All art is but imitation of nature.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.

Every reign must submit to a greater reign.

The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.