Seneca the Younger Quotes

There is no distinction of persons among them, and deference is shown to merit rather than to noble blood.

It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.

It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.

High birth is an accident, not a virtue.

While property continues to be pretty equally divided, and a considerable share of information pervades the community, the tendency of people’s suffrage will be to elevate merit even from obscurity. As riches increase and accumulate in a few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in greater degree considered only as a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.

People do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but What can he do? If he has any useful art, he is welcome, and if he exercises it, and behaves well, he will be respected by all that know him; but a mere Man of Quality, who on that account, wants to live upon the Public, by some Office or Salary, who will be despised and disregarded.

The last thing I wanted in life was to be measured by what I had inherited, as opposed to what I had done.

It is a greater advantage to be honestly educated than honorably born.

A beggar's book outworths a noble's blood.

What I like about the Order of the Garter is that there is no damned merit about it.

I am no herald to inquire into men's pedigree; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues.

If thou takest virtue for the rule of life, and valuest thyself upon acting in all things comfortably thereto, thou wilt have no cause to envy lords and princes; for blood is inherited, but virtue is common property, and may be acquired by all; it has, moreover, an intrinsic worth, which blood has not.

Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit than he who bestows one.

Mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless the individual has worth.

Nobody is just anything... everyone is of equal value, regardless of their station

A well-born man is fortunate, but so is the man about whom people no longer ask, 'is he well-born?'

Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by thanking his rank for his talent.

Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding unity of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur.

Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.

Hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendants.

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; The rest is all but leather and prunello.

Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences.

Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong.