Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.E. – 65 A.D.) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist. Seneca was born in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. As a writer Seneca is known for his philosophical works and for his plays, which are all tragedies. His prose works include a dozen essays and one hundred and twenty-four letters dealing with moral issues. These writings constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for ancient Stoicism.
Quotes by Seneca…
Principles are like seeds; they are little things which do much good, if the mind which receives them has the right attitudes.
All men wish to be happy, but are dull at perceiving exactly what it is that makes life happy.
The wretched hasten to hear of their own miseries.
Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.
They who have light in themselves will not revolve as satellites.
I will have care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a humiliating, and the heaviest of all servitudes. Liberty is maintained by moderate desires.
Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the target at any distance.
Fortune dreads the brave.
Every night we should call ourselves to account: “What weakness have I overcome today? What passions opposed? What temptations resisted? What virtue acquired?” Our weaknesses will decrease of themselves if they are brought every day to the light.
The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depends upon the future. We let go of the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance — and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.
