Seneca The Younger Quotes

If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (tutor to Nero) complained that his peers were wasting time and money accumulating too many books, admonishing that “the abundance of books is a distraction.” Instead, Seneca recommended focusing on a limited number of good books, to be read thoroughly and repeatedly.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful

Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.

There will always be causes for anxiety, whether due to prosperity or to wretchedness. Life will be driven on through a succession of preoccupations: we shall always long for leisure, but never enjoy it.

Love of bustle is not industry.

Life’s like a play. It’s not the length but the excellence of the acting that matters.

The mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply.

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

Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.

Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits

Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received.

Nero: "Am I forbidden to do what all may do?" Seneca: "From high rank high example is expected.

There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.’ ” —PLUTARCH, CATO THE YOUNGER, 4 It’s easy to act—to just dive in. It’s harder to stop, to pause, to think: No,

He praised his own achievements, not without cause but without end.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.

Anger often comes to us, but more often we come to it.

Our fears are always more numerous than our dangers.”—Seneca the Younger

He may have agreed with Napoleon, who said, ‘Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet,’ and with Seneca the Younger: ‘Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

عاملوا من هم دونكم كما تحبون أن يعاملكم من هم فوقكم, وكلما ذكرتم ما لكم من سلطان على عبيدكم, اذكرو ايضاً أن لغيركم هذا السلطان نفسه عليكم

يجب أن تقدر الناس بأخلاقهم لا بما يؤدونه من اعمال, ذلك أن الاخلاق يكسبها الرجل نفسه, اما الاعمال التى يؤديها فإن الظروف هى التى تخلقها له

ليس ثمة عبودية تحقر من صاحبها كالعبودية التى يفرضها هو على نفسه

Cui prodest scelus, is fecit ... (Medea)

If thou wisheth to be loved, love.

For children also strike the mouth of their parents, and the mother's hair is disturbed, and the child is torn.

Obviously no two creation stories can both be true. All of those invented by the many known thousands of religions and sects in fact have certainly been false. A great many educated citizens have realized that their own faiths are indeed false, or at least questionable in details. But they understand the rule attributed to the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger that religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished, and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory their respective stations, either in active or contemplative life; their excellent understandings were improved by study; philosophy had purified their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstition; and their days were spent in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Yet all these sages (it is no less an object of surprise than of concern) overlooked or rejected the perfection of the Christian system. Their language or their silence equally discover their contempt for the growing sect which in their time had diffused itself over the Roman empire. Those among them who condescend to mention the Christians consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit submission to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning.

In a word, do you want to know how briefly they really live? See how keen they are to live a long life. Enfeebled old men beg in their prayers for an additional few years; they pretend they are younger than they really are; they flatter themselves by this falsehood, and deceive themselves as gladly as if they deceived fate at the same time. But when some real illness has at last reminded them that they are mortal, how terrified they are when they die, as if they're not leaving life but are being dragged from it! They cry out repeatedly that they've been fools because they've not really lived, and that they'll live in leisure if only they escape their illness. Then they reflect on how uselessly they made provision for things they wouldn't live to enjoy, and how fruitless was all their toil.

If you have ever come upon a grove that is thick with ancient trees rising far above their usual height and blocking the view of the sky with their cover of intertwining branches, the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot, and your wonder at the unbroken shade in the midst of open space will create in you a sense of the divine (numen). Or, if a cave made by the deep erosion of rocks supports a mountain with its arch, a place not made by hands but hollowed out by natural causes into spaciousness, then your mind will be aroused by a feeling of religious awe (religio). We venerate the sources of mighty rivers, we build an altar where a great stream suddenly bursts forth from a hidden source, we worship hot springs, and we deem lakes sacred because of their darkness or immeasurable depth. (Seneca the Younger, Letters 41.3)

Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we have lost becomes a pleasant memory to us. No man reverts with pleasure to any subject which he will not be able to reflect upon without pain. So too it cannot but be that the names of those whom we have loved and lost come back to us with a sort of sting; but there is a pleasure even in this sting. 5. For, as my friend Attalus used to say: “The remembrance of lost friends is pleasant in the same way that certain fruits have an agreeably acid taste, or as in extremely old wines it is their very bitterness that pleases us. Indeed, after a certain lapse of time, every thought that gave pain is quenched, and the pleasure comes to us unalloyed.” 6. If we take the word of Attalus for it, “to think of friends who are alive and well is like enjoying a meal of cakes and honey; the recollection of friends who have passed away gives a pleasure that is not without a touch of bitterness. Yet who will deny that even these things, which are bitter and contain an element of sourness, do serve to arouse the stomach?” 7. For my part, I do not agree with him. To me, the thought of my dead friends is sweet and appealing. For I have had them as if I should one day lose them; I have lost them as if I have them still. Therefore, Lucilius, act as befits your own serenity of mind, and cease to put a wrong interpretation on the gifts of Fortune. Fortune has taken away, but Fortune has given. 8. Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long this privilege will be ours.

Според вас, стоиците, храбрият ще се излага на опасности." Ни най-малко; той не ще се бои от тях, но ще ги избягва. Предпазливостта му подхожда, страхът не. "Какво тогава? Той няма да се уплаши от смъртта, от оковите, от огъня, от другите удари на съдбата, така ли?" Няма. Той знае, че те не са беди, а само изглеждат. Смята ги за празни страхове на човешкия живот. Опиши му плен, камшици, окови, бедност, телесни терзания било от болест, било от неправда. Прибави каквото и да е - той ще го причисли към страховете на лудия. От тези неща могат да се страхуват страхливците. Да не би да смяташ за беда това, до което някой ден ще трябва да прибегнем сами? Питаш какво е беда. Да отстъпваш пред нещата, наречени беди, и да им жертваш свободата си, заради която трябва да се изтърпява всичко. Свободата изчезва, ако не презрем всичко, което ни надява хомот. Нямаше да се чудят какво подобава на храбрия, ако знаеха какво е храброст... Сенека, До Серен за твърдостта на мъдрия в: Избрани диалози

We can start with approximately nine traditional authors of the New Testament. If we consider the critical thesis that other authors wrote the pastoral letters and such letters as Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians, we'd have an even larger number. Another twenty early Christian authors20 and four heretical writings mention Jesus within 150 years of his death on the cross.21 Moreover, nine secular, non-Christian sources mention Jesus within the 150 years: Josephus, the Jewish historian; Tacitus, the Roman historian; Pliny the Younger, a politician of Rome; Phlegon, a freed slave who wrote histories; Lucian, the Greek satirist; Celsus, a Roman philosopher; and probably the historians Suetonius and Thallus, as well as the prisoner Mara Bar-Serapion.22 In all, at least forty-two authors, nine of them secular, mention Jesus within 150 years of his death. In comparison, let's take a look at Julius Caesar, one of Rome's most prominent figures. Caesar is well known for his military conquests. After his Gallic Wars, he made the famous statement, "I came, I saw, I conquered." Only five sources report his military conquests: writings by Caesar himself, Cicero, Livy, the Salona Decree, and Appian.23 If Julius Caesar really made a profound impact on Roman society, why didn't more writers of antiquity mention his great military accomplishments? No one questions whether Julius did make a tremendous impact on the Roman Empire. It is evident that he did. Yet in those 150 years after his death, more non-Christian authors alone comment on Jesus than all of the sources who mentioned Julius Caesar's great military conquests within 150 years of his death. Let's look at an even better example, a contemporary of Jesus. Tiberius Caesar was the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus' ministry and execution. Tiberius is mentioned by ten sources within 150 years of his death: Tacitus, Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Seneca, Valerius Maximus, Josephus, and Luke.24 Compare that to Jesus' forty-two total sources in the same length of time. That's more than four times the number of total sources who mention the Roman emperor during roughly the same period. If we only considered the number of secular non-Christian sources who mention Jesus and Tiberius within 150 years of their lives, we arrive at a tie of nine each.25

Traditionally, in the system that Augustus inherited from the Republic, the Roman command structure was class-based. As mentioned earlier, the officer class came from the narrow aristocracy of senators and equestrians. The great armies of the Republic were commanded by senators who had attained the rank of consul, the pinnacle of their society. Their training in military science came mainly from experience: until the later second century B.C., aspiring senators were required to serve in ten campaigns before they could hold political office 49 Intellectual education was brought to Rome by the Greeks and began to take hold in the Roman aristocracy sometime in the second century B.C.; thus it is the Greek Polybius who advocates a formal training for generals in tactics, astronomy, geometry, and history.50 And in fact some basic education in astronomy and geometry-which Polybius suggests would be useful for calculating, for example, the lengths of days and nights or the height of a city wall-was normal for a Roman aristocrat of the late Republic or the Principate. Aratus' verse composition on astronomy, several times translated into Latin, was especially popular.51 But by the late Republic the law requiring military service for office was long defunct; and Roman education as described by Seneca the Elder or Quintilian was designed mainly to produce orators. The emphasis was overwhelmingly on literature and rhetoric;52 one did not take courses, for example, on "modern Parthia" or military theory. Details of grammar and rhetorical style were considered appropriate subjects for the attention of the empire's most responsible individuals; this is attested in the letters of Pliny the Younger, the musings ofAulus Gellius, and the correspondence of Fronto with Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius.53

Time waits for no one (tempus neminem manet) Lucius Annaeus Seneca ("The Younger")

On the other hand, for just as long, others have warned about its dangers. "Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness," wrote Seneca the Younger. In the 19th century, a collection of proverbs, entitled Reveries of a Paragrapher (1897), warned, "Almost anything can be preserved in alcohol, except health, happiness, and money." Needless

Seneca the Younger, who condemned collectors for caring more about the outsides of books than their contents, and for using books “not as the tools of learning, but as decorations for the dining-room.” Petrarch had likewise criticized collectors who hoarded manuscripts as ornaments for their homes. “There are those who decorate their rooms with furniture devised to decorate their minds,” he sniffed, “and they use books as they use Corinthian vases.” 36

The idea that time is valuable was not new to the Middle Ages. The earliest allusion to time having value has been attributed to a fragment of the Greek orator Antiphon (480–411 BC) which states that ‘the most costly outlay is time.’ Five centuries later, Seneca the Younger reminds his friend Lucillius that time is precious because man is mortal and his days are numbered: ‘embrace every hour,’ he advises, ‘the stronger hold you have on today, the less will be your dependence on tomorrow.

Unfortunately, Stoicism proved impossible to teach to anyone who didn’t already find its ideas and practices emotionally appealing. Anyone else trained along Stoic lines simply ended up learning how to pursue irrational ends with a Stoic’s focused will and utter disregard for popular opinion. The Roman emperor Claudius, for example, arranged to give his stepson the best available Stoic training at the hands of Seneca the Younger, one of the great Roman Stoic philosophers. The young man’s name was Nero; you may have heard of him, but probably not as a model of Stoic virtue. The emperor Marcus Aurelius, himself a Stoic philosopher of no mean skill, tried the same thing with his son Commodus, and the results were nearly as bad.