By Seneca • Roman Stoicism & Practical Wisdom
Composed in the final years of his life, Seneca's 124 moral epistles to Lucilius offer timeless counsel on the brevity of time, friendship, grief, wealth, and facing mortality with equanimity.
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
“Quaeris Alcidae parem? Nemo est nisi ipse.”
“Aliquando enim et vivere fortiter facere est”
“Fortune has taken away, but Fortune has given.”
“Atqui vivere, militare est. But life is a warfare.”
“Non amittuntur sed præmittuntur. They are not lost but sent before.”
“Volat ambiguis Mobilis alis hora. The swift hour flies on double wings.”
“Si vis amari, ama. If you wish to be loved, love.”
“Every pleasure defers to its last its greatest delights.”
“Inwardly everything should be different but our outward face should conform to the crowd.”
“Anyone entering our homes should admire us rather than our furnishings.”
“He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.”
“Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.”
“If I accede to Parmenides there is nothing left but the One; if I accede to Zeno, not even the One is left.”
“[Seneca] would have denounced the opinion to which most philosophers, tacitly or otherwise, have come round in the last half-century, that it is no part of the business of philosophy to turn people into better persons, as tantamount to desertion or lèse-majesté.”
“Seneca's virtue shows forth so live and vigorous in his writings, and the defense is so clear there against some of these imputations, as that of his wealth and excessive spending, that I would not believe any testimony to the contrary.”
“Caligula used to say that Seneca, who was very popular just then, composed "mere school exercises," and that he was "sand without lime.”
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
“Servare cives, major est virtus patriae patri.”