Quotes from Seneca the Younger

Love of action is not industry.

True love hates and will not bear delay.

True love can fear no one.

He who has fostered the sweet poison of love by fondling it, finds it too late to refuse the yoke which he has of his own accord assumed.

I am like a book, with pages that have stuck together for want of use: my mind needs unpacking and the truths stored within must be turned over from time to time, to be ready when occasion demands.

Great men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

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?

Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs.

Luck is preparation multiplied by opportunity.

The fortune of war is always doubtful.

Don't stumble over something behind you.

A good mind possesses a kingdom.

If wisdom were offered me with the proviso that I should keep it shut up and refrain from declaring it, I should refuse. There's no delight in owning anything unshared.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

He who seeks wisdom is a wise man; he who thinks he has found it is mad.

Wisdom teaches us to do, as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a colour.

Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than to much cunning.

True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model.

You can only acquire it successfully if you cease to feel any sense of shame.

If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not communicate it, I would refuse the gift.

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.

Luck never made a man wise.

Beauty is such a fleeting blossom, how can wisdom rely upon its momentary delight?

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.