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Seneca Quotes


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It is another's fault if he be ungrateful; but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so. - I had rather never receive a kindness than never bestow one. - Not to return a benefit is a great sin; but not to confer one is a greater.
[Beneficence]

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

It is by the benefit of letters that absent friends are, in a manner, brought together.

It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.

It is foolish to strive with what we cannot avoid; we are born subjects, and to obey God is perfect liberty; he that does this, shall be free, safe, and quiet; all his actions shall succeed to his wishes.
[Liberty]

It is for the superfluous things of life that men sweat.
[Motivation]

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
[Risks]

It is not death we fear, but the thought of it.

It is not manly to turn one's back on fortune.
[Risks]

It is not the incense, or the offering which is acceptable to God, but the purity and devotion of the worshiper.
[Motives]

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

It is often better not to see an insult, than to avenge it.

It is only luxury and avarice that make poverty grievous to us; for it is a very small matter that does our business ; and when we have provided against cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but vanity and excess.
[Poverty]

It is only the surprise and newness of the thing which makes terrible that misfortune, which by premeditation might be made easy to us; for what some people make light by sufferance, others do by foresight.

It is pleasant at times to play the madman.

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

It is rash to condemn where you are ignorant.

It is safer to affront some people than to oblige them; for the better a man deserves, the worse they will speak of him; as if the professing of open hatred to their benefactors were an argument that they lie under no obligation to him.
[Obligation]

It is the bounty of nature that we live, but of philosophy that we live well; which is, in truth, a greater benefit than life itself.
[Life]


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