Seneca

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

It is to this law that our souls must adjust themselves, this they should follow, this they should obey. Whatever happens, assume that it was bound to happen, and do not be willing to rail at Nature. That which you cannot reform, it is best to endure, and to attend uncomplainingly upon the God under whose guidance everything progresses; for it is a bad soldier who grumbles when following his commander.

It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.

I may become a poor man; I shall then be one among many. I may be exiled; I shall then regard myself as born in the place to which I shall be sent. They may put me in chains. What then? Am I free from bonds now? Behold this clogging burden of a body, to which nature has fettered me! “I shall die,” you say; you mean to say “I shall cease to run the risk of sickness; I shall cease to run the risk of imprisonment; I shall cease to run the risk of death.”

You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.

I am endeavouring to live every day as if it were a complete life.

What profit is there in crossing the sea and in going from one city to another? If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality. Perhaps you have reached Athens, or perhaps Rhodes; choose any state you fancy, how does it matter what its character may be? You will be bringing to it your own.

Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live. And often this living nobly means that you cannot live long.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

He who is brave is free.

The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.

Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms — you'll be able to use them better when you're older.

There is no reason why poverty should call us away from philosophy—no, nor even actual want. For when hastening after wisdom, we must endure even hunger. Men have endured hunger when their towns were besieged, and what other reward for their endurance did they obtain than that they did not fall under the conqueror’s power? How much greater is the promise of the prize of everlasting liberty, and the assurance that we need fear neither God nor man! Even though we starve, we must reach that goal.

Through hardship to the stars.

Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides.

Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left even for posterity to discover.

I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know, they do not approve, and what they approve, I do not know.

To consort with the crowd is harmful; there is no person who does not make some vice attractive to us, or stamp it upon us, or taint us unconsciously therewith.

You should rather please yourself than the people; take thought for the quality, not the number, of judgements made about you.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.

Let us become intimate with poverty, so that Fortune may not catch us off our guard. We shall be rich with all the more comfort, if we once learn how far poverty is from being a burden.

If you wish to have leisure for your mind, either be a poor man, or resemble a poor man. Study cannot be helpful unless you take pains to live simply; and living simply is voluntary poverty.

With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.

No one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life. Yet even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. But this conviction must be firmly grasped and not merely adopted in words, if we wish to draw any strength from what we know.