Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“If i had not been admitted to these studies it would not have been worth while to have been born.”

“Soft living imposes on us the penalty of debility; we cease to be able to do the things we've long been grudging about doing.”

“Ritirati in te stesso per quanto puoi; frequenta le persone che possono renderti migliore e accogli quelli che puoi rendere migliori.”

“You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.”

“I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.”

“While we are postponing, life speeds by”

“It is the quality of a great soul to scorn great things and to prefer that which is ordinary rather than that which is too great.”

“And so when you see a man often wearing the robe of office, when you see one whose name is famous in the Forum, do not envy him; those things are bought at the price of life. They will waste all their years, in order that they may have one year reckoned by their name.”

“Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the applause of the populace. Just as it was started on its first day, so it will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The part of life we really live is small.' For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.”

“Per aspera ad Astra.”

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”

“Nūllum magnum ingenium sine mixtūrā dēmentiae fuitNo great talent without an element of madness”

“But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. Devote yourself entirely to her. You're worthy of her, she's worthy of you-fall into each other's arms. Say a firm, plain no to every other occupation.”

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality”

“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”

“Mit dem Leben ist es wie mit einem Theaterstück; es kommt nicht darauf an, wie lange es ist, sondern wie bunt.”

“I have learned to be a friend to myself Great improvement this indeed Such a one can never be said to be alone for know that he who is a friend to himself is a friend to all mankind”

“To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand”

“As often as I have been amongst men, I have returned less a man.”

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

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”

“I am not a ‘wise man,’ nor . . . shall I ever be. And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked. It is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes.”

“Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets just like love or liquor.”

“Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.”

“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.”

“We learn not in the school, but in life.”

“Ab honesto virum bonum nihil deterret. (Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable.)-A Wrinkle in Time”

“If we could be satisfied with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago.”

“We should conduct ourselves not as if we ought to live for the body, but as if we could not live without it. Our too great love for it makes us restless with fears, burdens us with cares, and exposes us to insults.”

“No good thing renders its possessor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss; nothing, however, is lost with less discomfort than that which, when lost, cannot be missed.”

“When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.”

“Do not run hither and thither and distract yourself by changing your abode; for such restlessness is the sign of a disordered spirit.”

“Life, if you know how to use it, is long; but…many, following no fixed aim, shifting and… dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course.”

“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.”

“No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best.”

“Why do I not rather seek some real good - one which I could feel, not one which I could display? These things that draw the eyes of men, before which they halt, which they show to one another in wonder, outwardly glitter, but are worthless within.”

“The highest good is a mind that scorns the happenings of chance, and rejoices only in virtue.”

“One hand washes the other.(Manus Manum Lavat)”

“Quanto potius, deorum opera celebrare quam Philippi aut Alexandri latrocinia...”

“Huius (sapientis) opus unum est de divinis humanisque verum invenire; ab hac numquam recedit religio, pietas, iustitia ...”

“A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient; nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in a fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient; and looking upon them only as sick and extravagant.”

“What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water?”

“I am loath to call clemency what was, rather, the exhaustion of cruelty.”

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”

“How many are quite unworthy to see the light, and yet the day dawns.”

“Qui mori didicit servire dedidicit.”