Seneca the Younger Quotes

Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise.

Time is the king of all men, he is their parent and their grave, and gives them what he will and not what they crave.

Life to me is defined by uncertainty. Uncertainty is the state in which we live, and there is no way to outfox it.

Men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.

Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge with one dash wipes the picture away.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear.

The two grand tyrants of the Earth, Time and Chance.

That's the nature of this business. Something that took ten years to make can crumble in an instant. It could be snatched away from you at any moment.

You can't change what time has in store for you, as the only constant that I've known is change.

None can hold fortune still and make it last.

Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out.

Fortune soon tires of carrying anyone long on her shoulders.

Fortune raises up and fortune brings low both the man who fares well and the one who fares badly; and there is no prophet of the future for mortal men.

Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.

How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!

Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.

But acting is very much a profession that is you're hot one moment and not the next - and that is totally cool. I think that's what I find most fascinating and most exciting about it - is that it can be gone in a puff of smoke.

Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

Don't take too much comfort in the fact that you're successful today because tomorrow could bring failure. There's no surety in life.

The foundations of our lives are far more fragile than we think. So we are severely shaken when life turns out to have a will of its own.

The world rolls round forever like a mill; it grinds out death and life and good and ill; it has no purpose, heart or mind or will.

We have to know that nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed, especially tomorrow.

Success is very ephemeral. You depend entirely on the desire of others, which makes it difficult to relax.