seneca

“In sapientis quoque animo, etiam cum uulnus sanatum est, cicatrix manet." : "The wise man's mind will keep its scar long after the wound has healed”

“Afasta-te da companhia dos perniciosos, eles fazem nascer em ti um licenciosidade que lhe é natutal.”

“Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.”

“No es que dispongamos de poco tiempo, es más bien que perdemos mucho.”

“There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.”

“Nullus accusator caret culpa; omnes peccaviums.”

“We must limit the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about houses, theatres, and marketplaces. They mind other men's business, and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, "Whither are you going?" he will answer, "By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall see some people and do something." They wander purposelessly seeking for something to do, and do, not what they have made up their minds to do, but what has casually fallen in their way. They move uselessly and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining anything. Many men spend their lives in exactly the same fashion, which one may call a state of restless indolence.”

“What difference does it make how much is laid away in a man's safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another's and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already? You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.”

“There is no genius without a touch of madness.”

“His eyes blaze and sparkle, his whole face is crimson with blood that surges from the lowest depths of the heart, his lips quiver, his teeth are clenched, his hair bristles and stands on end, his breathing is forced and harsh, his joints crack from writhing, he groans and bellows, bursts out into speech with scarcely intelligible words, strikes his hands together continually, and stamps the ground with his feet; his whole body is excited and performs great angry threats; it is an ugly and horrible picture of distorted and swollen frenzy - you cannot tell if this vice is more execrable or more hideous.”

“Bonis nocet, qui malis parcit. He harms the good (people) who spares the evil.”

“Hurry up and live.”

“It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity.”

“While we wait for life, life passes”

“Chi è dappertutto, non è da nessuna parte.”

“It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence”

“He will live ill who does not know how to die well”

“It is the sign of a weak mind to be unable to bear wealth.”

“All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers. For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return.”

“Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—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.”

“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.”

“It's not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.”

“You should rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile duties who wish to have daily as their closest friends Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be too busy to see you, none of these will not send his visitor away happier and more devoted to himself, none of these will allow anyone to depart empty-handed. They are at home to all mortals by night and by day.”

“I wish Lucilius you had been so happy as to have taken this resolution long ago I wish we had not deferred to think of an happy life till now we are come within light of death But let us delay no longer”

“It should be our care not so much to live a long life as a satisfactory one.”

“Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness”

“We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole”

“Pobre não é aquele que tem pouco, mas antes aquele que muito deseja.”

“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.”

“Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. [...] Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.”

“But when you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.”

“It is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it.”

“Lat, urbes constituit aetas: hora dissolvit: momento fit cinis: diu sylva. An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them. In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.”

“It is sweet to draw the world down with you when you are perishing.”

“They strive to attain their wishes by every available means, instructing and compelling themselves to dishonest and difficult acts. And when their labour is without reward, it is the fruitless disgrace that tortures them - they are not grieved to have desired evil things but to have desired in vain. Then remorse for what they began lays hold of them, and the fear of beginning again, and thence creeps in the agitation of mind which can find no relief - because neither can they rule nor can they obey their desires. And then comes the hesitancy of a life failing to clear a way for itself, and the dull wasting of a soul lying torpid amidst forsaken hopes.”

“we deceive ourselves in thinking that death only follows life whereas it both goes before and will follow after it for where is the difference in not beginning or ceasing to exist the effect of both is not to be”

“Consider the whole world reconnoitre individuals j who is there whose life is not taken up with providing for to morrow Do you ask what harm there is in this An infinite deal for such men do not live but are about to live they defer every thing from day to day however circumspect we are life will still outrun us.”

“they Whatever can make life truly happy is absolutely good in its own right because it cannot be warped into evil From whence then comes error In that while all men wish for a happy life they mistake the means for the thing itself and while they fancy themselves in pursuit of it they are flying from it for when the sum of happiness consists in solid tranquillity and an unembarrassed confidence therein they are ever collecting causes of disquiet and not only carry burthens but drag them painfully along through the rugged and deceitful path of life so that they still withdraw themselves from the good effect proposed the more pains they take the more business they have upon their hands instead of advancing they are retrograde and as it happens in a labyrinth their very speed puzzles and confounds them”

“Nessun vento è favorevole per il marinaio che non sa a quale porto vuole approdare.”

“No prizefighter can go with high spirits into the strife if he has never been beaten black and blue; the only contestant who can confidently enter the lists is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent's fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary's charge, who has been downed in bloody but not it spirit, one who as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever.”

“Покажи мне, кто не раб. Один в рабстве у похоти, другой - у скупости, третий - у честолюбия и все - у страха.”

“Indeed the state of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but the most wretched are those who are toiling not even at their own preoccupations, but must regulate their sleep by another's, and their walk by another's pace, and obey orders in those freest of all things, loving and hating. If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own.”

“Night brings our troubles to the light rather than banishes them.”

“Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.”

“the fates lead those who will those who won't they drag.”

“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”

“Religion is regarded by the ignorant as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

“Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.”

“Pomozi onome koji nosi teret a ne onome koji ga spušta pored tebe.”

“The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.”