Alan > Alan's Quotes

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
― Seneca

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
― Seneca

“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms -- you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.”
― Seneca

“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
― Seneca the Younger

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.”
― Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. ”
― Seneca

“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
― Seneca

“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“No man was ever wise by chance”
― Seneca

“They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
― Seneca

“Only time can heal what reason cannot.”
― Seneca

“Timendi causa est nescire -
Ignorance is the cause of fear.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions

“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”
― Seneca

“Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”
― Seneca

“If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay; yet we easily let others encroach on our lives—worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“We should every night call ourselves to an account;
What infirmity have I mastered today?
What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“There is no genius without a touch of madness.”
― Seneca

“Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life