"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

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

From J.K. Rowling's 2008 Harvard Commencement Address"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Volume VIII. Tragedies: Hercules Furens. Troades. Medea. Hippolytus or Phaedra. Oedipus)

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"There is no great genius without some touch of madness."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Stoic Philosophy of Seneca Essays and Letters)

"All cruelty springs from weakness."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Ad astra per aspera. (To the stars through difficulties.)"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. "
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

""Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive."

"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Beyond all things is the sea"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"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."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Stoic Philosophy of Seneca Essays and Letters)

"As is a tale; so is life: not how long it is but how good it is, is what matters."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"We are mad, not only individually but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders, but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. "
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness. "
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Stoic Philosophy of Seneca Essays and Letters)

"It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Stoic Philosophy of Seneca Essays and Letters)

"The sun also shines on the wicked."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"One should count each day a separate life."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Religion is reguarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (On the Shortness of Life)

"Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool "
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca: Moral Essays, Volume I)

"There has not been any great talent without an element of madness"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"He who spares the wicked injures the good."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Non Scholae Sed Vitae"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"To wish to be well is a part of becoming well."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"In truth, Serenus, I have for a long time been silently asking myself to what I should liken such a condition of mind, and I can find nothing that so closely approaches it as the state of those who, after being released from a long and serious illness, are sometimes touched with fits of fever and slight disorders, and, freed from the last traces of them, are nevertheless disquieted with mistrust, and, though now quite well, stretch out their wrist to a physician and complain unjustly of any trace of heat in their body. It is not, Serenus, that these are not quite well in body, but that they are not quite used to being well; just as even a tranquil sea will show some ripple, particularly when it has just subsided after a storm. What you need, therefore, is not any of those harsher measures which we have already left behind, the necessity of opposing yourself at this point, of being angry with yourself at that, of sternly urging yourself on at another, but that which comes last -confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the right path, and have not been led astray by the many cross- tracks of those who are roaming in every direction, some of whom are wandering very near the path itself. But what you desire is something great and supreme and very near to being a god - to be unshaken. "
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Stoic Philosophy of Seneca Essays and Letters)

"As Lucretius says: 'Thus ever from himself doth each man flee.' But what does he gain if he does not escape from himself? He ever follows himself and weighs upon himself as his own most burdensome companion. And so we ought to understand that what we struggle with is the fault, not of the places, but of ourselves"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Stoic Philosophy of Seneca Essays and Letters)

"It is the power of a mind to be unconquerable."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Stoic Philosophy of Seneca Essays and Letters)

"Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"vita nec bonum nec malum est."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Throw aside all hindrances and give up your time to attaining a sound mind"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"longa est vita si plena est."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"mors quid est? aut finis aut transitus."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit pauper est."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, Text mit Wort- und Sacherläuterungen)

"There has not been any great talent without an element of madness"
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"The time will come when diligent research over periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden...Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memories of us will have been effaced. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has something for every age to investigate. nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Opera: Naturalium Quaestionum Libri)