Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.”

“There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.”

“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.”

“A great fortune is a great slavery.”

“The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.”

“A great mind becomes a great fortune.”

“It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.”

“Precepts or maxims are of great weight and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can't find.”

“He who has great power should use it lightly.”

“I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.”

“We are more often frightened than hurt and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”

“The first step in a person's salvation is knowledge of their sin.”

“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”

“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”

“For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.”

“Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both this is an observation of the Middle Way.”

“It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, - superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.”

“The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.”

“A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.”

“For greed all nature is too little.”

“Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.”

“What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.”

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

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