Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.

2. For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys. The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

3. Huius (sapientis) opus unum est de divinis humanisque verum invenire; ab hac numquam recedit religio, pietas, iustitia ...

4. I am not a ‘wise man,’ nor . . . shall I ever be. And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked. It is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes.

5. It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully. On the Shortness of Life

6. The part of life we really live is small.' For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

7. Timendi causa est nescire - Ignorance is the cause of fear. Natural Questions

8. To win true freeedom you must be a slave to philosophy. Letters from a Stoic

9. Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them. Letters from a Stoic