Seneca
c. 4 BCE–65 CE · Statesman, playwright, and Stoic advisor
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman statesman, dramatist, and tutor to the young Nero. His surviving "Letters to Lucilius" and essays are practical, conversational, and concerned with time, mortality, and self-mastery. He was ordered to take his own life in 65 CE.
Ideas from Seneca
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca · Letters from a Stoic
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”
Seneca · On the Shortness of Life
“The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
Seneca · On Anger
“Anger is a short madness.”
Seneca · On Anger
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
Seneca · Letters from a Stoic
“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
Seneca · Letters from a Stoic
“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
Seneca · On the Shortness of Life
“He who is brave is free.”
Seneca · Letters from a Stoic
“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
Seneca · Letters from a Stoic
“Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.”
Seneca · Letters from a Stoic
“We are members of one great body, planted by nature.”
Seneca · On Anger
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