Seneca quotes, checked against the source

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, around 4 BC to AD 65: Roman senator, playwright, adviser to Nero, and the Stoic who wrote most about ordinary life. Every line below is labelled by how close it stays to his Latin.

The quotes come from his Letters to Lucilius, the essays such as On Anger and On the Shortness of Life, and the consolations. Lines are grouped by how they relate to the text: taken from the sources, rendered freely after the source, or only attributed to him by tradition. A popular line that is genuine but shortened is discussed on its own page: did Seneca say we suffer more in imagination than in reality?

From the sources 55

• The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
• The first movement of the mind is not within our power.
• The greater part of life passes while we are doing something other than living.
• While we postpone, life speeds by.
• We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
• Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
• Associate with those who will make a better person of you.
• No wind is favourable to one who does not know to which port he is sailing.
• It is not the one who has little, but the one who craves more, who is poor.
• Those who cross the sea change the sky above them, not their mind.
• The bravest sight in the world is someone struggling against adversity.
• Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
• Whoever fears death will never do anything worthy of a living person.
• You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.
• If you wish to be loved, love.
• As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
• It is not that we have little time, but that we waste much of it.
• Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.
• It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
• Nothing is ours except time.
• The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which depends upon tomorrow and wastes today.
• It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.
• People are frugal in guarding their property, but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.
• To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
• Fate leads the willing, and drags the unwilling.
• No one is more unhappy than the person who never faces adversity.
• He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.
• No one is worthy of a god unless he has paid no heed to riches.
• A great fortune is a great slavery.
• He who has learned to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
• Let us prepare our minds as if we had come to the very end of life.
• A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a person perfected without trials.
• Let us see to it that the memory of those we have lost is a pleasant one.
• There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us.
• The reward of a good deed is to have done it.
• While we are postponing life, it is passing.
• Money has never made anyone rich; on the contrary it makes everyone greedier for more.
• What fortune has not given you, it cannot take away.
• Economy comes too late when the bottom is in sight.
• You cannot both bend the world to your will and keep your peace of mind.
• Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labour does the body.
• It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
• It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.
• Long is the road through precepts, short and effective through examples.
• He who gives should at once forget what he gave; he who receives should never forget it.
• Everything, Lucilius, belongs to others; only time is ours.
• You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.
• Do not be unhappy before your time.
• Let us cherish and use old age; it is full of pleasure if you know how to use it.
• Man is something sacred to man.
• Pain is slight, if opinion adds nothing to it.
• No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it.
• Life is long enough, if you know how to use it.
• We are limbs of one great body.
• A plant that is often moved never takes root.

Freely after the source 9

• The freedom of your mind does not depend on the fullness of your days.
• What use is it to run ahead to meet your misfortune?
• Wealth by nature is bounded; wealth by opinion has no end.
• What fortune gives, it gives on loan; the wise man is not startled when it asks it back.
• Perhaps the trouble will come, perhaps not; meanwhile it is not here.
• What fortune gives us we hold on loan, not in ownership.
• What you lend you must be able to spare; count it among what you have already given away.
• Let us enjoy our friends while we may; how long that is, nobody knows.
• What you fear may well never come; meanwhile you suffer as if it already had.

All authors on one page, with the labels explained · Epictetus · Marcus Aurelius