Simon > Simon's Quotes

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
― C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
― Seneca

“All cruelty springs from weakness.”
― Seneca, Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency

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

“Non est ad astra mollis e terris via" - "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars”
― 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

“The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.”
― Seneca, Natural Questions

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

“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

“He who is brave is free”
― 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

“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

“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

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

“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.”
― Seneca

“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.”
― seneca, Peace of Mind: De Tranquillitate Animi

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

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

“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. 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

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

“Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool ”
― Seneca, Moral Essays, Volume I: De Providentia. De Constantia. De Ira. De Clementia

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

“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

“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