Lūcius Annaeus Seneca, called Seneca the Younger (c.4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, orator, and tragedian. As Rome’s foremost intellectual figure in the mid-1st century CE, and as “prime minister,” Seneca was the virtual ruler of the Roman Empire 54–62 CE, during the initial chapter of the Emperor Nero’s reign.
Born to a provincial equestrian family in Corduba, now Cordoba, Spain, Seneca was the son of rhetorician Marcus Annaeus Seneca, called Seneca the Elder.
Seneca the Younger began a career in politics and law in Rome in 31 CE. However, he was banished to Corsica (41–49 CE) by Emperor Claudius on an accusation of adultery with Claudius’s niece Julia Livilla, and there Seneca wrote the three treatises, Consolation.
Recalled to Rome in 49 CE through the influence of Empress Agrippina the Younger, Seneca became the tutor to her son, the future Emperor Nero. Seneca enjoyed substantial political influence for a while and was made consul by Nero in 57 CE, but he later withdrew from public life and devoted himself to writing and philosophy. In 65 CE, Seneca was implicated in the conspiracy of Pisa to kill Nero and ordered to commit suicide.
Seneca’s writings include Epistulae morales ad Lucilium (64 CE,) a collection of 124 letters dealing with moral issues written to Lucilius Junior, and Apocolocyntosis (divi) Claudii (64 CE; ‘The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius,’) a scathing satire.
Seneca’s extant works comprise ten ethical treatises: On Providence (64 CE,) On the Constancy of the Wise Man (55 CE,) On Anger (in three books, 41 CE,) To Marcia, on Consolation (40 CE,) On the Happy Life (58 CE,) On Leisure (62 CE,) On Tranquility of Mind (63 CE,) On the Brevity of Life (49 CE,) To Polybius, on Consolation (44 CE,) and To Helvia, on Consolation (42 CE.)
Seneca’s rhetorical type of tragedy had extensive influence in the Italian and French Renaissance. In Elizabethan England, adaptations of Seneca’s Tenne Tragedies and his terse and epigrammatic literary style inspired the language and psychology of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Let a man be never so ungrateful or inhuman, he shall never destroy the satisfaction of my having done a good office.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Goodness
No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Life
It is for the superfluous things of life that men sweat.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Motivation
We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Defects, Procrastination
The road to learning by precept is long, but by example short and effective.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Example
A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Libraries
Abstinence is easier than temperance
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
One who seeks friendship for favorable occasions strips it of all its nobility.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
You can only acquire it successfully if you cease to feel any sense of shame.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Success, Learning, Wisdom, Shame
How can a thing possibly govern others when it cannot be governed itself?
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Action
A well-governed appetite is a great part of liberty.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Appetite
He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Strength, Forgiveness, Injury
Economy is in itself a great source of revenue.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Economy
Nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
Courage leads to the stars, fear toward death.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Courage
The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Fate
Greatness stands upon a precipice, and if prosperity carries a man ever so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Prosperity
A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude.—If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it.—But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself?—Miserable is he who slights that witness.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Conscience
To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Focus, Action
The wise man then followed a simple way of life—which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Simplicity, Life, Wise, Wisdom
It’s the admirer and the watcher who provoke us to all the inanities we commit.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Audiences, Praise
It is with life as with a play-it matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Acting
A hated government does not long survive.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Government
As is a tale; so is life: not how long it is but how good it is, is what matters.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
It goes far toward making a man faithful to let him understand that you think him so; and he that does but suspect I will deceive him, gives me a sort of right to do it.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Fate rules the affairs of men, with no recognizable order.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Fate
Not he who has little, but he who wishes more, is poor.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Blessings, Poverty, Gratitude, Perspective, Appreciation
The mind unlearns with difficulty what has long been impressed on it.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Difficulty
What if a body might have all the pleasures in the world for asking? Who would so unman himself as, by accepting them, to desert his soul, and become a perpetual slave to his senses?
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Pleasure
It is within the power of every man to live his life nobly, but of no man to live forever. Yet so many of us hope that life will go on forever, and so few aspire to live nobly.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Life
There are more things, Lucilius, that frighten us than injure us, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Worry
Whenever you hold a fellow creature in distress, remember that he is a man.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Tolerance
Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Grieving, Grief
Take away from mankind their vanity and their ambition, and there would be but few claiming to be heroes or patriots.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Vanity
Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Risk, Danger, Anxiety, Fear
The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Politics
Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears.—The effect of precepts is, therefore, slow and tedious, while that of examples is summary and effectual.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Example
God is near you, is with you, is inside you.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Love, God
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Topics: Madness, Defects, Insanity, Genius, Sanity
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