Using Time Well

• "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested." -Seneca
• "So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it...life is long if you know how to use it." -Seneca
• "...with very few exceptions life ceases for the rest of us just when we are getting ready for it." -Seneca
• "People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy." -Seneca
• "They are trifling with life's most precious commodity, being deceived because it is an intangible thing...But nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing." -Seneca
• "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." -Seneca
• "But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today." -Seneca
• "The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately." -Seneca
• "Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. All the years that have passed before them are added to their own." -Seneca

Fate/Fortune

• "For what can be above the man who is above fortune?" -Seneca
• "Never have I trusted Fortune, even when she seemed to offer peace. All those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me—money, public office, influence—I relegated to a place whence she could claim them back without bothering me. I kept a wide gap between them and me, with the result that she has taken them away, not torn them away. No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortune unless he was first deceived by her favours." -Seneca
• "But the man who is not puffed up in good times does not collapse either when they change. His fortitude is already tested and he maintains a mind unconquered in the face of either condition." -Seneca
• "Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control: it can be neither given nor taken away." -Seneca
• "For we are naturally disposed to admire more than anything else the man who shows fortitude in adversity." -Seneca
• "If a great man falls and remains great as he lies, people no more despise him than they stamp on a fallen temple, which the devout still worship as much as when it was standing." -Seneca
• "Should it surprise me if the perils which have always roamed around me should some day reach me?" -Seneca
• "When a shipwreck was reported and he heard that all his possessions had sunk, our founder Zeno said, 'Fortune bids me be a less encumbered philosopher.'" -Seneca

Wisdom/Learning

• "We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too." -Seneca
• "I imagine many people could have achieved wisdom if they had not imagined they had already achieved it." -Seneca
• "Who has dared to tell himself the truth? Who even when surrounded by crowds of toadying sycophants is not his own greatest flatterer?" -Seneca
• "If you apply yourself to study you will avoid all boredom with life...you will attract many to become your friends and the finest people will flock about you. For even obscure virtue is never concealed but gives visible evidence of herself: anyone worthy of her will follow her tracks." -Seneca
• "Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after a rest...a short period of rest and relaxation will restore our powers. Unremitting effort leads to a kind of mental dullness and lethargy." -Seneca

Wealth/Greed

• "You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire. You will hear many people saying: 'When I am fifty I shall retire into leisure; when I am sixty I shall give up public duties.' And what guarantee do you have of a longer life? Who will allow your course to proceed as you arrange it? Aren't you ashamed to keep for yourself just the remnants of your life, and to devote to wisdom only that time which cannot be spent on any business? How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!" -Seneca
• "So it is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil." -Seneca
• "As far as I am concerned, I know that I have lost not wealth but distractions. The body's needs are few: it wants to be free from cold, to banish hunger and thirst with nourishment; if we long for anything more we are exerting ourselves to serve our vices, not our needs." -Seneca
• "Nothing satisfies greed, but even a little satisfies nature. So an exile's poverty brings no hardship; for no place of exile is so barren that it cannot abundantly support a man." -Seneca
• "Let us turn to private possessions, the greatest source of human misery. For if you compare all the other things from which we suffer, deaths, illnesses, fears, desires, endurance of pains and toils, with the evils which money brings us, the latter will far outweigh the others." -Seneca

Happiness

• "It was nature's intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can make himself happy. External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence in either direction: prosperity does not elevate the sage and adversity does not depress him." -Seneca
• "No man is despised by another unless he is first despised by himself." -Seneca
• "So you have to get used to your circumstances, complain about them as little as possible, and grasp whatever advantage they have to offer: no condition is so bitter that a stable mind cannot find some consolation in it." -Seneca
• "However, the two things must be mingled and varied, solitude and joining a crowd: the one will make us long for people and the other for ourselves, and each will be a remedy for the other; solitude will cure our distaste for a crowd, and a crowd will cure our boredom with solitude." -Seneca

Death

• "Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die." -Seneca
• "The wise man will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step." -Seneca
• "To quote Cicero, we hate gladiators if they are keen to save their life by any means; we favour them if they openly show contempt for it. You must realize that the same thing applies to us: for often the cause of dying is the fear of it." -Seneca
• "He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man." -Seneca