Seneca Stoicism Quotes

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

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.

It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

Regard [a friend] as loyal, and you will make him loyal.

To be everywhere is to be nowhere.

You should … live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.

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.

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.

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

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.

What fortune has made yours is not your own.

For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it? 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.

Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one.

If what you have seems insufficient to you, then though you possess the world, you will yet be miserable.

Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope … and you will cease to fear.’ … Widely different [as fear and hope] are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope … both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present.

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.

Maximum remedium est irae mora.

Sometimes, even to live is an act of courage.

The willing are led by fate, the reluctant are dragged.

Remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, we should love all our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.

Seneca and stoicism as a back door to explain why everything antifragile has to have more upside than downside

Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.

It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver, and a man who treats his silver as if it was earthenware is no less great.

No man is good by chance. Virtue is something which must be learned.

Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits, After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.

A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.

The boon that could be given can be withdrawn.

If you apply yourself to study you will avoid all boredom with life, you will not long for night because you are sick of daylight, you will be neither a burden to yourself nor useless to others, you will attract many to become your friends and the finest people will flock about you.

My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application—not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech—and learn them so well that words become works. No one to my mind lets humanity down quite so much as those who study philosophy as if it were a sort of commercial skill and then proceed to live in a quite different manner from the way they tell other people to live.

It is better to be despised for simplicity than to suffer agonies from everlasting pretense.

It does good also to take walks out of doors, that our spirits may be raised and refreshed by the open air and fresh breeze: sometimes we gain strength by driving in a carriage, by travel, by change of air, or by social meals and a more generous allowance of wine.

That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.

So the life of a philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundary as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god.

What good does it do you to go overseas, to move from city to city? 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.

For a delight in bustling about is not industry - it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind. And the state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia.

You are scared of dying - and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?

And if you want to know why all this running away cannot help you, the answer is simply this: you are running away in your own company.

If you want to study classical values such as courage or learn about stoicism, don’t necessarily look for classicists. One is never a career academic without a reason. Read the texts themselves: Seneca, Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius, when possible. Or read commentators on the classics who were doers themselves, such as Montaigne—people who at some point had some skin in the game, then retired to write books. Avoid the intermediary, when possible. Or fuhgetaboud the texts, just engage in acts of courage.

When you pursue wisdom, you will soon realize how much you don’t know. Your knowledge will be incomplete, but continually developing through your curiosity. Arrogance blocks new information from coming in. When you’re conceited, you’ll resist change, and struggle to preserve your fixed image. Don’t fall into smug idleness, used to comfort. Challenge what you think you know, not caring if other people see you as a fool. Progress daily in your own uncertainty.

Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits

[...] Say good-bye at last to those deceptive prizes more precious to those who hope for them than to those who have won them.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream.

Why be concerned about others, come to that, when you've outdone your own self? Set yourself a limit which you couldn't even exceed if you wanted to, and say good-bye at last to those deceptive prizes more precious to those who hope for them than to those who have won them. If there were anything substantial in them they would sooner or later bring a sense of fullness; as it is they simply aggravate the thirst of those who swallow them.

Do not trust her seeming calm; in a moment the sea is moved to its depths.

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

Every life without exception is a short one.

Sine philosophia nemo intrepide potest vivere, nemo secure.

Stoicism as the ideal “personal operating system

Even in the longest life real living is the least portion thereof.

Where you arrive does not matter as much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.

The man, though, whom you should admire and imitate is the one who finds it a joy to live and in spite of that is not reluctant to die.

[E]verything which went beyond our actual needs was just so much unnecessary weight, a burden to the man who had to carry it.

[Philosophers] have come to envy the philologist and the mathematician, and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies—with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives.

Let Nature make whatever use she pleases of matter, which is her own: lets us be cheerful and brave in the face of all, and consider that nothing of our own perishes. What is the duty of a good man? To offer himself to fate.

But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.

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

Associate with those who will make a better of man. Welcome those whom yourself can improve. Men learn while they teach.

A man is as much a fool for shedding tears because he isn't going to be alive a thousand years from now.

You should, I need hardly say, live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.

[W]e can have the things we need for our ordinary purposes if we will only be content with what the earth has made available on its surface.

The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort.

All vices are at odds with nature.

[A] man is wealthy if he has attuned himself to his restricted means and has made himself rich on little.

The most critical part of this system was the belief that you, the student who has sought out Stoicism, have the most important job: to be good! To be wise. “To remain the person that philosophy wished to make us.” Do your job today. Whatever happens, whatever other people’s jobs happen to be, do yours. Be good.

To want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperance. Apart from which this kind of obsession with the liberal arts turns people into pedantic, irritating, tactless, self-satisfied bores, not learning what they need simply because they spend their time learning things they will never need. The scholar Didymus wrote four thousand works: I should feel sorry him if he had merely read so many useless works.

[I]ndulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. It needs to be treated somewhat strictly to prevent it from being disobedient to the spirit. Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather.

So - to the best of your ability - demonstrate your own guilt, conduct inquiries of your own into all the evidence against yourself. Play the part first of prosecutor, then of judge, and finally of pleader in mitigation. Be harsh with yourself at times.

[C]ling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always take full not of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do.

Every hour of the day, countless situations arise that call for advice, and for that advice we have to look to philosophy.

I am acting on behalf of later generations. I am writing down a few things that may be of use to them.

The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.

Press on and make all your actions and words cohere and fit with one another, all struck from the same mold.

Having in mind not how bravely I was capable of dying but how far from bravely he was capable of bearing the loss, I commanded myself to live.

It's only when you're breathing your last that the way you've spent your time will become apparent, "I accept the terms, and feel no dread of the coming judgment.

It matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is

Perchance some day the memory of this sorrow Will even bring delight

Everywhere means nowhere.

[M]aking noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already. (Letter XVI)

[...] so läßt der, welcher der Lust nachjagt, alles andere liegen, und die Freiheit ist das erste, was er preisgibt [...]

Saiba que um teto de palha abriga o homem tão bem quanto o de ouro.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waist a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficient generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we know it was passing

The supreme ideal does not call for any external aids. It is homegrown, wholly self-developed. Once it starts looking outside itself for any part of itself it is on the way to being dominated by fortune.

A charming enemy comes to me as a friend; faults creep in calling themselves virtues; temerity cloaks itself with the name of courage; cowardice gets called moderation; and timidity passes itself off as caution.

The man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful independence and a happiness beyond all others. Whoever has said, "I have lived' receives a windfall every day he gets up in the morning.

Flattery looks very much like friendship, indeed not only resembles it but actually wins out against it. A person drinks it in with eager ears and takes it deeply to heart, delighted by the very qualities that make it dangerous.

Thinking of departed friends is to me something sweet and mellow. For when I had them with me it was with the feeling that I was going to lose them, and now that I have lost them I keep the feeling that I have them with me still.

Things we wouldn't be willing to pay for if it meant giving up our house for them, or some pleasant or productive estate, we are quite ready to obtain at the cost of anxiety, of danger, of losing our freedom, our decency, our time.

Death is nonexistence. I know what it’s like. It will be the same after me as it was before me. If death holds any torment, then that torment must also have existed before we came forth into light, but back then, we felt nothing troubling.

If ever you want to find out whether anything has been achieved, observe whether your intentions are the same today as they were yesterday. A change of intention shows that the mind is at sea, drifting here and there as carried by the wind.

So the spirit must be trained to a realization and an acceptance of its lot. It must come to see that there is nothing fortune will shrink from[.] There's no ground for resentment in all this. We've entered into a world in which these are the terms life is lived on – if you're satisfied with that, submit to them, if you're not, get out, whatever way you please.

Count yourself fortunate when you are able to live in a manner open to the public—when walls are there for shelter, not for concealment. For as a rule we think we have walls around us not to protect us but to afford greater privacy to our misdeeds.

Philosophy is not an occupation of a popular nature, nor is it pursued for the sake of self-advertisement. Its concern is not with words, but with facts. It is not carried on with the object of passing the day in an entertaining sort of way and taking the boredom out of leisure. It moulds and builds the personality, orders one’s life, regulates one’s conduct, shows one what one should do and what one should leave undone, sits at the helm and keeps one on the correct course as one is tossed about in perilous seas. Without it no one can lead a life free of fear or worry. Every hour of the day countless situations arise that call for advice, and for that advice we have to look to philosophy.

[I]n a man praise is due only to what is his very own. Suppose he has a beautiful home and a handsome collection of servants, a lot of land under cultivation and a lot of money out at interest; not one of these things can be said to be in him – they are just things around him. Praise in him what can neither be given nor snatched away, what is peculiarly a man's. You ask what that is? It is his spirit, and the perfection of his reason in that spirit.

It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. New preoccupations take the place of the old, hope excites more hope and ambition more ambition. They do not look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it.

In actuality, the current of influence between Pauline Christianity and Roman Stoicism ran in the other direction. Paul was deeply influenced by Stoic philosophy, if not directly by Seneca. He borrowed the notions of indifferent things, of what is properly one’s own (oikeiosis), the ideal of freedom from passion, and the paradoxical notion of freedom through slavery, fairly directly from the Stoics. 4

To lose someone you love is something you'll regard as the hardest of all blows to bear, while all the time this will be as silly as crying because the leaves fall from the beautiful trees that add to the charm of your home. [...] At one moment chance will carry off one of them, at another moment another; but the falling of the leaves is not difficult to bear, since they grow again, and it is no more hard to bear the loss of those whom you love and regard as brightening your existence; for even if they do not grow again they are replaced. "But their successors will never be quite the same." No, and neither will you.

We, too, are lit and put out. We suffer somewhat in the intervening period, but at either end of it there is a deep tranquillity. For, unless I'm mistaken, we are wrong, my dear Lucilius, in holding that death follows after, when in fact it precedes as well as succeeds. Death is all that was before us. What does it matter, after all, whether you cease to be or never begin, when the result of either is that you do not exist?