Seneca the Younger Quotes

When the Christian doesn't find joy on account of his happenings, he can always find joy in spite of them.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

We do not need to become unhappy just because things don't go our way.

We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.

The satisfaction of life May not be ours, But the beauty of hope Is all ours.

The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.

My life is perfect because I accept it as it is.

Whatever may happen, every kind of fortune is to be overcome by bearing it.

The path to joy leads through despair.

We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.

I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.

There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.

To live in the midst of suffering, which we do, we do, amid distress, and to keep some equilibrium in the midst of that - that would be happiness enough.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.

I've had at least my share of tragedy, but I have had far more than my share of happiness.

Every calamity is to be overcome by endurance.

People try to make a Greek tragedy of my life, and they can't do it. I'm too happy.

Acceptance of one's life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.

Sure, I suffered a lot. But it's not like the end of the world and it's not who I am. I lead quite a pleasant life and I'm able to divorce a perceived reality from my actual experience of life.

I do a lot of lectures on survival. I always say you can't change what happened, so have a little wallow, feel very sorry for yourself, and then get up and move forward. You can't change what happened.

Even when we have physical hardships, we can be very happy.

You know, you have to have some inner philosophy to deal with adversity.