Quotes from Lucius Annaeus Seneca

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

In war there is no prize for runner-up.

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

Upon occasion we should go as far as intoxication.... Drink washes cares away, stirs the mind from its lowest depths.... But in liberty moderation is wholesome, and so it is in wine.... We ought not indulge too often, for fear the mind contract a bad habit, yet it is right to draw it toward elation and release and to banish dull sobriety for a little.

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.

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.

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

All art is but imitation of nature.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

An age will come after many years when the Ocean will loose the chains of things, and a huge land lie revealed; when Tiphys will disclose new worlds and Thule no more be the ultimate.

We ought to take outdoor walks, to refresh and raise our spirits by deep breathing in the open air.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk and to make our words and actions all of a color.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

Do you seek Alcides' equal? None is, except himself.

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

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.

Man is a reasoning animal.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

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.