“When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“If we could be satisfied with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“Men whose spirit has grown arrogant from the great favor of fortune have this most serious fault—those whom they have injured they also hate.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“Do not run hither and thither and distract yourself by changing your abode; for such restlessness is the sign of a disordered spirit.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. [...] Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“Why do I not rather seek some real good - one which I could feel, not one which I could display? These things that draw the eyes of men, before which they halt, which they show to one another in wonder, outwardly glitter, but are worthless within.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“It is our conscience, not our pride, that has put doorkeepers at our doors.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“The highest good is a mind that scorns the happenings of chance, and rejoices only in virtue.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“No good thing renders its possessor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss; nothing, however, is lost with less discomfort than that which, when lost, cannot be missed.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“Life, if you know how to use it, is long; but…many, following no fixed aim, shifting and… dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“We are indeed apt to ascribe certain faults to the place or to the time; but those faults will follow us, no matter how we change our place.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“We should conduct ourselves not as if we ought to live for the body, but as if we could not live without it. Our too great love for it makes us restless with fears, burdens us with cares, and exposes us to insults.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“Although the sum and substance of the happy life is unalloyed freedom from care, and though the secret of such freedom is unshaken confidence... men gather together that which causes worry.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“What Chance has made yours is not really yours.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“Turn to philosophy, therefore, with all your soul, sit at her feet, cherish her; a great distance will then begin to separate you from other men. You will be far ahead of all mortals, and even the gods will not be far ahead of you. Do you ask what will be the difference between yourself and the gods? They will live longer. But, by my faith, it is the sign of a great artist to have confined a full likeness to the limits of a miniature. The wise man's life spreads out to him over as large a surface as does all eternity to a god. There is one point in which the sage has an advantage over the god; for a god is freed from terrors by the bounty of nature, the wise man by his own bounty.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“There is no worse penalty for vice than the fact that it is dissatisfied with itself and all its fellows.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“La vera gioia è una cosa seria.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“¿Preguntas cúal es el fundamento de la sabiduría? No gozarte en cosas vanas.”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
“No he nacido para un sólo rincón; mi patria es todo el mundo visible”
― Seneca, quote from Moral Letters to Lucilius Volume 1
Seneca
Born place: Córdoba, Spain
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“And before me the empty table at the Theater Café with my reservation - Barnum Nilsen, 8PM - the only table no one sits at. And this too is an echo, an echo of time, the shadows of a discus spinning through blinding sunlight.”
― Lars Saabye Christensen, quote from The Half Brother
“It's easier to fall back into the same old patterns of hate and retribution, because at least then we're doing something.”
― Dan Wells, quote from Fragments
“I saw the folded note peeking up from behind the cover of the book in which I'd hidden it.
I brushed my fingertips across the lineny surface, my skin sparking with electricity, my fingers itching to pull it free.
I shoudn't, I told myself, even as I held my breath and watched myself withdrawing it from the book. I tried to tamp down the feeling of anticipation coursing through me at the same time I argued that it was a mistake to look at it again.
It didn't deserve anymore of my time. He didn't deserve the space he already occupied in my mind.
I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed me there, tucked beneath my desk, reading a note that I'd already memorized.
No one paid me any attention.
I held the letter, vividly picturing the six words written inside the folds. Six words that I already knew by heart. Six words that meant more to me than they should.
I unfolded the top third of the paper, then the bottom, purposely keeping my eyes unfocused for just a moment.
My heart stopped.
And then my eyesight cleared.
I pledge to keep you safe.”
― Kimberly Derting, quote from The Pledge
“At some point the talk got heated, and Paolo called Mother a strumpet, for which Daddy was said to have stomped a serious mudhole in Paolo's ass.”
― Mary Karr, quote from The Liars' Club
“Certainly on this planet it is not apparent that there are beings more intelligent than humans, although a case can be made for dolphins and whales, and in fact if humans succeed in destroying themselves with nuclear weapons, a case can be made that ALL other animals are smarter than humans.”
― Carl Sagan, quote from The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
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