We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
— Seneca the Elder
The most floundering Seneca the Elder quotes that are easy to memorize and remember
We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.
What you think about yourself is much more important than what others think of you.
You can end love more easily than you can moderate it.
It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.
Failure changes for the better, success for the worse.
No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.
Let us be brave in the face of adversity.
The mind is slow to unlearn what it learnt early.
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.
The road to learning by precept is long, but by example short and effective.
If a man does not know what port he is steering for, no wind is favorable to him.
For the great benefits of our being- our life, health, and reason-we look upon ourselves.
If you wish to fear nothing, consider that everything is to be feared.
It is wrong not to give a hand to the fallen. This right is common to the whole human race.
No man will swim ashore and take his baggage with him.
Add each day something to fortify you against poverty and death.
Malice drinks one-half of its own poison.
We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money;
and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
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.
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
The great soul surrenders itself to fate.
When in fear, it is safest to force the attack.
No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.
Courage leads starward, fear toward death.
It is not death we fear, but the thought of it.
Know this, that he that is a friend to himself, is a friend to all men.
Courage is a scorner of things which inspire fear.
Unhappy is the man, though he rule the world, who doesn't consider himself supremely blessed. In order to consider himself supremely blessed he must deeply understand that things could be much worse but aren't! To not do that is to always be less happy than he could be.
If you want to be loved, love.
The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.
No evil is without its compensation .
.. it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss, that troubles us.
To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.
What is the proper limit for wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary;
and, second, to have what is enough.
It is for the superfluous things of life that men sweat.
He who looks for advantage out of friendship strips it all of its nobility.
The conditions of conquest are always easy.
We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back
Fortune reveres the brave, and overwhelms the cowardly.
The sun also shines on the wicked.
There's some end at last for the man who follows a path; mere rambling is interminable.
It is not manly to turn one's back on fortune.
Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.
Nothing is our except time.
A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.
All art is an imitation of nature.
It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and prefer things in measure to things in excess.
Unhappy is the man, though he rule the world, who doesn't consider himself supremely blessed.