…it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it.

Because thou writest me often, I thank thee … Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

Envy of other people shows how they are unhappy. Their continual attention to others behavior shows how they are boring.

Oh, what darkness does great prosperity cast over our minds!

And this, too, affords no small occasion for anxieties – if you are bent on assuming a pose and never reveal yourself to anyone frankly, in the fashion of many who live a false life...

Huius (sapientis) opus unum est de divinis humanisque verum invenire; ab hac numquam recedit religio, pietas, iustitia …

Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

To expect punishment is to suffer it; and to earn it is to expect it.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

A person’s fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.

However much you possess there’s someone else who has more, and you’ll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him.

Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it...

that you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they...

The road is long if one proceeds by way of precepts but short and effectual if by way of personal example.

Maximum remedium est irae mora.

So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had...

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...

Away with the world’s opinion of you – it’s always unsettled and divided. Away with the pursuits that have occupied the whole of your life – death is going to deliver the verdict in your...

The world you see, nature’s greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and...

In truth, Serenus, I have for a long time been silently asking myself to what I should liken such a condition of mind, and I can find nothing that so closely approaches it as the...

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

How many men soever you slay, you will never kill your successor.

The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.

Desultory reading is delightful, but to be beneficial, our reading must be carefully directed.

Here is your great soul —the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe...

Most powerful is he who has himself in his power.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

Only a mind that is deeply stirred can utter something noble and beyond the power of others.

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...

And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles, he has not lived long – he has existed long. For what...

So let those people go on weeping and wailing whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity, let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries; but let those who have spent...

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.”— Seneca

Quam bene vivas refert, non quam diu

If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.

At times we ought to drink even to intoxication, not so as to drown, but merely to dip ourselves in wine, for wine washes away troubles and dislodges them from the depths of the mind...

they Whatever can make life truly happy is absolutely good in its own right because it cannot be warped into evil From whence then comes error In that while all men wish for a happy...

The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the...

Count your years and you’ll be ashamed to be wanting and working for exactly the same things as you wanted when you were a boy. Of this one thing make sure against your dying day...

Nūllum magnum ingenium sine mixtūrā dēmentiae fuitNo great talent without an element of madness

We are born under circumstances that would be favorable if we did not abandon them. It was nature’s intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can...

The part of life we really live is small.’ For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but...

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

Even for studies, where expenditure is most honorable, it is justifiable only so long as it is kept within bounds. What is the use of having countless books and libraries, whose titles their owners can...

There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Reason shows us there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

we deceive ourselves in thinking that death only follows life whereas it both goes before and will follow after it for where is the difference in not beginning or ceasing to exist the effect of...