If there’s one thing entrepreneurs and travelers alike can agree on, it’s that life is unpredictable. Unfortunately, this also means that things often don’t go as planned. This is when knowing how to live in the present and stay positive becomes essential, two skills that the flâneur is an artful master of. That’s also where Seneca comes in. Famous for his stoic philosophy, Seneca has a lot of wisdom to share when it comes to making the most of life.
Check out this list 152 quotes for some inspiration!
Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quotes
Associate with people who are likely to improve you.
Seneca
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
Seneca
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Seneca
Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.
Seneca
He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.
Seneca
Hurry up and live.
Seneca
Cease to hope and you will cease to fear.
Seneca
If you wish to be loved; Love!
Seneca
Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
Seneca
We learn not in the school, but in life.
Seneca
There is no genius without a touch of madness.
Seneca
Wealth is the slave of a wise man and the master of a fool.
Seneca
He who spares the wicked injures the good.
Seneca
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
Seneca
Only time can heal what reason cannot.
Seneca
What fortune has made yours is not your own.
Seneca
No man was ever wise by chance.
Seneca
While we are postponing, life speeds by.
Seneca
Life is long, if you know how to use it.
Seneca
Life, if well lived, is long enough.
Seneca
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
Seneca
It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.
Seneca
Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.
Seneca
Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms ― you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.
Seneca
If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.
Seneca
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
Seneca
He who is brave is free.
Seneca
A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.
Seneca
Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.
Seneca
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
Seneca
It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
Seneca
Remember that pain has this most excellent quality. If prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot be prolonged.
Seneca
To wish to be well is a part of becoming well.
Seneca
I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.
Seneca
Regard a friend as loyal, and you will make him loyal.
Seneca
It is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it.
Seneca
Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.
Seneca
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
Seneca
In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases.
Seneca
Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.
Seneca
Of this one thing make sure against your dying day – that your faults die before you do.
Seneca
You should live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.
Seneca
It is of course better to know useless things than to know nothing.
Seneca
Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.
Seneca
He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.
Seneca
Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one.
Seneca
Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.
Seneca
Ignorance is the cause of fear.
Seneca
It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.
Seneca
Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.
Seneca
Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable.
Seneca
We must go for walks out of doors, so that the mind can be strengthened and invigorated by a clear sky and plenty of fresh air. At times it will acquire fresh energy from a journey by carriage and a change of scene, or from socializing and drinking freely. Occasionally we should even come to the point of intoxication, sinking into drink but not being totally flooded by it; for it does wash away cares, and stirs the mind to its depths, and heals sorrow just as it heals certain diseases.
Seneca
While we wait for life, life passes.
Seneca
Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.
Seneca
The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.
Seneca
What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.
Seneca
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.
Seneca
If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
Seneca
Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.
Seneca
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?
Seneca
Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement.
Seneca
The sun also shines on the wicked.
Seneca
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.
Seneca
The part of life we really live is small. For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.
Seneca
Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
Seneca
What really ruins our character is the fact that none of us looks back over his life.
Seneca
Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.
Seneca
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Seneca
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only for how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.
Seneca
Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.
Seneca
The abundance of books is distraction.
Seneca
Courage leads to heaven; fear leads to death.
Seneca
Economy is too late when you are at the bottom of your purse.
Seneca
The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.
Seneca
For greed all nature is too little.
Seneca
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Seneca
You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.
Seneca
He that does good to another does good also to himself.
Seneca
The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.
Seneca
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
Seneca
There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.
Seneca
Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant.
Seneca
A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.
Seneca
It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.
Seneca
Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.
Seneca
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
Seneca
It does not matter how many books you have, but how good are the books which you have.
Seneca
Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.
Seneca
If we could be satisfied with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago.
Seneca
Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
Seneca
For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.
Seneca
There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.
Seneca
Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.
Seneca
You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.
Seneca
Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.
Seneca
No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best.
Seneca
Everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things, since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.
Seneca
No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity.
Seneca
We cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
Seneca
If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich.
Seneca
It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.
Seneca
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.
Seneca
No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.
Seneca
It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and ― what will perhaps make you wonder more ― it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.
Seneca
The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.
Seneca
To expect punishment is to suffer it; and to earn it is to expect it.
Seneca
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
Seneca
To err is human, but to persist in the mistake is diabolical.
Seneca
A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.
Seneca
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
Seneca
Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.
Seneca
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
Seneca
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
Seneca
The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.
Seneca
There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.
Seneca
People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.
Seneca
The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what is in Fortune’s control and abandoning what lies in yours.
Seneca
Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and nothing need arouse one’s irritation so long as one doesn’t make it bigger than it is by getting irritated.
Seneca
It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not Ill-supplied but wasteful of it.
Seneca
To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
Seneca
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.
Seneca
Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs.
Seneca
You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.
Seneca
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.
Seneca
Men whose spirit has grown arrogant from the great favor of fortune have this most serious fault — those whom they have injured they also hate.
Seneca
One hand washes the other.
Seneca
There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
Seneca
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
Seneca
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
Seneca
When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
Seneca
Those whom true love has held, it will go on holding.
Seneca
What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water.
Seneca
The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.
Seneca
Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.
Seneca
They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.
Seneca
An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them. In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.
Seneca
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 abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.
Seneca
Gold tests with fire, woman with gold, man with woman.
Seneca
We are members of one great body, planted by nature. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.
Seneca
The great blessing of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.
Seneca
The body’s needs are few: it wants to be free from cold, to banish hunger and thirst with nourishment; if we long for anything more we are exerting ourselves to serve our vices, not our needs.
Seneca
I will storm the gods, and shake the universe.
Seneca
Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets just like love or liquor.
Seneca
A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
Seneca
So you must match time’s swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow.
Seneca
Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present. Seneca
Seneca
How many are quite unworthy to see the light, and yet the day dawns.
Seneca
Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
Seneca
To win true freedom you must be a slave to philosophy.
Seneca
Nothing is ours, except time.
Seneca
A Final Word
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a powerful Roman thinker and writer. While his quotes sometimes seem harsh, they offer great insight into how to live a good life and make the most of our time on earth.
What other Seneca quotes would you add to the list? Or do you have another favorite teaching from the school of Stoicism? Leave it in the comments below!
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