“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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“Toco tu boca, con un dedo toco el borde de tu boca, voy dibujándola como si saliera de mi mano, como si por primera vez tu boca se entreabriera, y me basta cerrar los ojos para deshacerlo todo y recomenzar, hago nacer cada vez la boca que deseo, la boca que mi mano elige y te dibuja en la cara, una boca elegida entre todas, con soberana libertad elegida por mí para dibujarla con mi mano por tu cara, y que por un azar que no busco comprender coincide exactamente con tu boca que sonríe por debajo de la que mi mano te dibuja.
Me miras, de cerca me miras, cada vez más de cerca y entonces jugamos al cíclope, nos miramos cada vez más de cerca y nuestros ojos se agrandan, se acercan entre sí, se superponen y los cíclopes se miran, respirando confundidos, las bocas se encuentran y luchan tibiamente, mordiéndose con los labios, apoyando apenas la lengua en los dientes, jugando en sus recintos donde un aire pesado va y viene con un perfume viejo y un silencio. Entonces mis manos buscan hundirse en tu pelo, acariciar lentamente la profundidad de tu pelo mientras nos besamos como si tuviéramos la boca llena de flores o de peces, de movimientos vivos, de fragancia oscura. Y si nos mordemos el dolor es dulce, y si nos ahogamos en un breve y terrible absorber simultáneo del aliento, esa instantánea muerte es bella. Y hay una sola saliva y un solo sabor a fruta madura, y yo te siento temblar contra mí como una luna en el agua.”
― Julio Cortázar, quote from Hopscotch
“I had a question. 'Why does the name Pearl Harbor sound so familiar?'
The lieutenant colonel's eyes narrowed. 'Pearl Harbor is the most famous U.S. military base in the world,' he said crisply. 'It's the only place on U.S. soil that has been attacked in a wars, since the Revolutionary War.'
None of this was ringing a bell, but you already know I'm totally uneducated.
Gazzy leaned over to whisper, 'It was a movie with Ben Affleck.'
Ah. Now I remembered.”
― James Patterson, quote from Max
“Even the Devil was an angel once, Alejandro. It’s only a matter of time until you become El Diablo, too.” I”
― M. Robinson, quote from El Diablo
“People pay for that they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And the pay for it simply: by the lives they lead. - James Baldwin”
― Dorothy Allison, quote from Bastard Out of Carolina
“Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.”
― Zadie Smith, quote from White Teeth
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