Seneca the Younger Quotes

So many things--nay every real thing--is good if only it will be humble and ordinate.

It is impossible to be just if one is not generous.

If any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good.

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil.

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.

Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul.

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it isn't. If you leave out justice you'll find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity" and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

Is not virtue a negation of becoming?

One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.

To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.

Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many it is almost a vice.

One path alone leads to a life of peace. The path of virtue.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it.

Know that morality is a curb, not a spur.

Curb your talent lest it speed where virtue does not guide.

There was no other God, religion, or lawful magistracy, than conscience, which teaches all men the precepts of Justice, to do no injury, to live honestly, and give everyone his due.

I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances.

When goodness is lost, it is replaced by morality.

We talk so much about one's rights... so little about what is actually right.

You can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

Universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones.