539 Quotes by Seneca the Younger

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit.

I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling.

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

Unfamiliarity lends weight to misfortune, and there was never a man whose grief was not heightened by surprise.

Who-only let him be a man and intent upon honor-is not eager for the honorable ordeal and prompt to assume perilous duties? To what energetic man is not idleness a punishment?

To lose a friend is the greatest of all evils, but endeavour rather to rejoice that you possessed him than to mourn his loss.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

Poverty with joy isn’t poverty at all. The poor man is not one who has little, but one who hankers after more.

On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.