Seneca the Younger Quotes on Life
Seneca returned again and again to the conduct and brevity of human life, and the quotes gathered here, drawn from his Letters to Lucilius and his essay On the Shortness of Life, set out his central conviction. Life, he argues, is not in fact short: it is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. The problem is postponement, for while we are postponing, life speeds by, and the remedy is to live fully and deliberately in the present rather than deferring life to some future that may never come. Seneca also acknowledges life's difficulty, granting that sometimes even to live is an act of courage, and he measures a life by its depth and use rather than its mere length.
Quotes
-
“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
Letters to Lucilius, 1 -
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
Aliquando enim et vivere fortiter facere est -
Attributed to Seneca the Younger:
“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favourable.”
-
Attributed to Seneca the Younger:
“Our care should not be to have lived long, but to have lived enough.”
-
Attributed to Seneca the Younger:
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”
-
“Just as we suffer from excess in all things, so we suffer from excess in literature; thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture room.”
Letter CVI: On the corporeality of virtue | Line 12 -
“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough.”
Moral Essays | De Brevitate Vitae ("On the Shortness of Life", trans. John W. Basore), Ch. 1 -
“Pyrrhus: No law the wretched captive's life doth spare. Agamemnon: What law forbids not, let this shame forbid. Pyrrhus: 'Tis victor's right to do whate'er he will. Pyrrhus: Then should he will the least who most can do.”
Troades(The Trojan Women) | lines 333-336 -
“Alternate translation: Death weighs on him who is known to all, but dies unknown to himself. ( The Philisophical Life by James Miller).”
Thyestes -
“Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.”
Letter IV: On the terrors of death -
“The wise man is joyful, happy and calm, unshaken, he lives on a plane with the gods.”
Letter LIX: On Pleasure and Joy -
“You will thus understand that what you fear is either insignificant or short-lived.”
Letter XXIV: On despising death