26 Seneca Quotes from The Daily Stoic on Vices, Virtues, and Fulfillment

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Excerpt: These Seneca quotes from The Daily Stoic offer timeless wisdom for better living. Wisdom that, when applied, can become a “ruler” for life…

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Introduction: The Role Of Role Models

“Without a ruler to do it against, you can’t make crooked straight.”

Seneca, The Daily Stoic (Page 36)

Role models serve as rulers for our lives. Without role models, there’s no reference to compare the line of our lives against. How to know which direction is “straight” and which is “crooked?” It’s like when you’re lost at sea.

Having a reference point like the North Star or a compass to guide your direction is everything. Otherwise, who knows which direction leads to land? All direction is arbitrary without a guide. This is how it is in our lives, too.

We already have certain guides in place that keep us relatively on track. Things like laws, policies, morals, rules, and rights. These are in place to ensure “crooked” doesn’t lead to mistreatment, danger, or malevolence.

But, within the context of realizing our true potential and living our best lives, there are an infinite number of ways we can draw out our lines.

Wisdom is our guide.

And it is up to each individual to pick their guide. Wisdom doesn’t only come from one kind of person and there’s no one universal “straight” line. It’s a judgement call that each person needs to make in their own right and in accordance to their own goals.

“Straight” is simply the direction that leads you to where you most want to be.

So, who will it be? Who do you want to model your life after? Who do you see as being wise that can be the ruler for the line of your life? Don’t take this decision lightly.

Just because there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing someone, doesn’t mean you should just arbitrarily or lightly choose. Adding more crooked lines to your life will only further confuse the matter. Choose your ruler(s) wisely.

In a sense, this is what philosophy serves as: rulers for our lives. By studying wisdom and immersing ourselves in the minds of great thinkers, we’re able to solve more of our own life problems and approach each new challenge with a more clear mind. And Stoicism is an excellent ruler to consider for this very purpose.

Stoicism, in my eyes, is the careful application of the serenity prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Regardless of your views on God, the notion of accepting what’s out of our control, focusing our attention on what is, and carefully investigating where each of the elements of our lives falls—is extremely powerful.

Below, you’ll find 26 of my favorite Seneca quotes from The Daily Stoic—a book offering 366 days of Stoic insights and exercises. These quotes have been carefully arranged to connect themes and give you a deeper understanding of Seneca’s thoughts on vices, virtues, and fulfillment. And hopefully, they’ll become a ruler of sorts for your own life. Emphasis added is my own. Enjoy!

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The List: 26 Seneca Quotes from The Daily Stoic on Vices, Virtues, and Fulfillment

“Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts!”

Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 79)

“In all things we should try to make ourselves be as grateful as possible. For gratitude is a good thing for ourselves, in a manner in which justice, commonly held to belong to others, is not. Gratitude pays itself back in large measure.”

Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 385)

“Let us get used to dining out without the crowds, to being a slave to fewer slaves, to getting clothes only for their real purpose, and to living in more modest quarters.”

Seneca, On Tranquility Of Mind, via The Daily Stoic (Page 271)

“Trust me, real joy is a serious thing. Do you think someone can, in the charming expression, blithely dismiss death with an easy disposition? Or swing open the door to poverty, keep pleasures in check, or meditate on the endurance of suffering? The one who is comfortable with turning these thoughts over is truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful. It’s exactly such a joy that I would wish for you to possess, for it will never run dry once you’ve laid claim to its source.”

Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 227)

“But the wise person can lose nothing. Such a person has everything stored up for themselves, leaving nothing to Fortune, their own goods are held firm, bound in virtue, which requires nothing from chance, and therefore can’t be either increased or diminished.”

Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 295)

“The greatest portion of peace of mind is doing nothing wrong. Those who lack self-control live disoriented and disturbed lives.”

Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 145)

“Won’t you be walking in your predecessors’ footsteps? I surely will use the older path, but I find a shorter and smoother way, I’ll blaze a trail there. The ones who pioneered these paths aren’t our masters, but our guides. Truth stands open to everyone, it hasn’t been monopolized.”

Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 251)

“We like to say that we don’t get to choose our parents, that they were given by chance—yet we can truly choose whose children we’d like to be.”

Seneca, On The Brevity Of Life, via The Daily Stoic (Page 173)

“Anything that must yet be done, virtue can do with courage and promptness. For anyone would call it a sign of foolishness for one to undertake a task with a lazy and begrudging spirit, or to push the body in one direction and the mind in another, to be torn apart by wildly divergent impulses.”

Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 259)

“It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest—by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.”

Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 250)

“The mind must be given relaxation—it will rise improved and sharper after a good break. Just as rich fields must not be forced—for they will quickly lose their fertility if never given a break—so constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind. But it regains its powers if it is set free and relaxed for a while. Constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul.”

Seneca, On Tranquility Of Mind, The Daily Stoic (Page 381)

“I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”

Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 265)

“The diseases of the rational soul are long-standing and hardened vices, such as greed and ambition—they have put the soul in a straitjacket and have begun to be permanent evils inside it. To put it briefly, this sickness is an unrelenting distortion of judgment, so things that are only mildly desirable are vigorously sought after.”

Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 93)

“Show me someone who isn’t a slave! One is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to power, and all are slaves to fear. I could name a former Consul who is a slave to a little old woman, a millionaire who is the slave of the cleaning woman… No servitude is more abject than the self-imposed.”

Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 287)

“There is no vice which lacks a defense, none that at the outset isn’t modest and easily intervened—but after this the trouble spreads widely. If you allow it to get started you won’t be able to control when it stops. Every emotion is at first weak. Later it rouses itself and gathers strength as it moves along—it’s easier to slow it down than to supplant it.”

Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 175)

“Being unexpected adds to the weight of a disaster, and being a surprise has never failed to increase a person’s pain. For that reason, nothing should ever be unexpected by us. Our minds should be sent out in advance to all things and we shouldn’t just consider the normal course of things, but what could actually happen. For is there anything in life that Fortune won’t knock off its high horse if it pleases her?”

Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 286)

“I may wish to be free from torture, but if the time comes for me to endure it, I’ll wish to bear it courageously with bravery and honor. Wouldn’t I prefer not to fall into war? But if war does befall me, I’ll wish to carry nobly the wounds, starvation, and other necessities of war. Neither am I so crazy as to desire illness, but if I must suffer illness, I’ll wish to do nothing rash or dishonorable. The point is not to wish for these adversities, but for the virtue to make adversities bearable.”

Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 90)

“To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.”

Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus, via The Daily Stoic (Page 386)

“How much better to heal than seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes a lot of time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?”

Seneca, On Anger, The Daily Stoic (Page 306)

“No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”

Seneca, The Daily Stoic (Page 365)

“When you see someone often flashing their rank or position, or someone whose name is often bandied about in public, don’t be envious; such things are bought at the expense of life… Some die on the first rungs of the ladder of success, others before they can reach the top, and the few that make it to the top of their ambition through a thousand indignities realize at the end it’s only for an inscription on their gravestone.”

Seneca, On The Brevity Of Life, via The Daily Stoic (Page 222)

“It’s not at all that we have too short a time to live, but that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and it’s given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But when it’s poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when it’s employed to no good end, we’re finally driven to see that it has passed before we even recognized it passing. And so it is—we don’t receive a short life, we make it so.”

Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, The Daily Stoic (Page 382)

“Let us therefore set out whole-heartedly, leaving aside our many distractions and exert ourselves in this single purpose, before we realize too late the swift and unstoppable flight of time and are left behind. As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must size what flees.”

Seneca, Moral Letters, The Daily Stoic (Page 143)

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day… The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”

Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 349)

“Life is long if you know how to use it.”

Seneca, The Daily Stoic (Page 369)

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If you enjoyed these Seneca quotes from The Daily Stoic, then you should consider reading Ryan Holiday’s book in full. It comes highly recommended: