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Seneca the Elder

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Seneca

Roman Orator

In translation:

  • Delay is the best remedy for anger.
    • Source: De Ira
  • "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult."
  • "We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers."
  • "This is the law of benefits between men; the one ought to forget at once what he has given, and the other ought never to forget what he has received."
  • "An unpopular rule is never long maintained."
  • "Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received."
  • "Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."
  • "He who spares the wicked injures the good."
  • "If virtue precede us every step will be safe."
  • "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
  • "It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence."
  • "It is rash to condemn where you are ignorant."
  • "Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power."
  • "Not to feel one's misfortunes is not human, not to bear them in not manly."
  • "Speech is the mirror of the mind."
  • "The first step towards amendment is the recognition of error."
  • "The greatest remedy for anger is delay."
  • "The mind is slow to unlearn what it learnt early."
  • "The most onerous slavery is to be a slave to oneself."
  • "The path of precept is long, that of example short and effectual."
  • "To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature."
  • "To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind."
  • "Toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other."
  • "Unjust dominion cannot be eternal."
  • "We most often go astray on a well trodden and much frequented road."
  • "We should conduct ourselves not as if we ought to live for the body, but as if we could not live without it."
  • "Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool."
  • "Without an adversary prowess shrivels. We see how great and efficient it really is only when it shows by endurance what it is capable of."
  • "It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing."
  • "It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
  • "Live among men as if God beheld you; speak to God as if men were listening."
  • "Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long."
  • "The best ideas are common property."
  • "There is no great genius without some touch of madness."
  • "You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise."
  • "The spirit in which a thing is given determines that in which the debt is acknowledged; it's the intention, not the face-value of the gift, that's weighed."
  • "Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy."
  • "What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more."
  • "He who comes to a conclusion when the other side is unheard, may have been just in his conclusion, but yet has not been just in his conduct."
  • "No man ever became wise by chance."
  • "There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn as in doing it."
  • "The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires."
  • "If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not communicate it, I would refuse the gift."
  • "It is extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die."
  • "He who has injured thee was stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself."
  • "The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity."
  • "Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness."
  • "The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company."
  • "Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness."
  • "To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading."
  • "All cruelty springs from weakness."
  • "Fate leads the willing and drags along the unwilling."
  • "Time heals what reason cannot."
  • "Anyone can stop a man's life, but no one his death; a thousand doors open on to it."
  • "We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them."
  • "No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another if thou wishest to live for thyself."
  • "Laws do not persuade just because they threaten."

Last updated: 10-26-2005 03:52:15