Seneca the Younger Quotes

The punters [gamblers] know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race.

I prefer a real villain to a false hero.

Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.

There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other.

Hillary Clinton appears to believe in a form of stoicism - which is a tried and true life philosophy.

So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it. But he has now learned something very important about human nature. If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth.

Better is the wrong with sincerity, rather than the right with falsehood.

Never tell a lie-except for practice.

I have felt that the Gita teaches us that what cannot be followed in day-to-day practice cannot be called religion.

It is my belief... that the truth is generally preferable to lies.

Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.

I think what makes us human is those choices - whether to tell the truth or not.

The final arbitrator in philosophy is not how we think but what we do.

Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.

Solid character will reflect itself in consistent behavior, while poor character will seek to hide behind deceptive words and actions.

Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie-for example, the taint of vanity, the least attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance-will instantly vitiate the effect.

Every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?

People seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.

I renounce falsehood, whatsoever be the guise it assumes, and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it.

To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.

Good intentions are invariably ungrammatical.

In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.

It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do; and judge of them from what they do, not from what they say. Hence they have one code of maxims for profession and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show and another for use.

People who know how to act are never preachers.