Seneca the Younger Quotes

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.

I like simplicity; I don't need luxury.

I am convinced that there can be luxury in simplicity.

Coffee doesn't need a menu, it needs a cup. That's all it needs! Maybe a saucer underneath the cup — that's it.

It is only luxury and avarice that make poverty grievous to us; for it is a very small matter that does our business, and when we have provided against cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but vanity and excess.

But I don't want more things than I need, either.

A small room is enough; a small quantity of food is enough; a few clothes are enough; one lover, a very ordinary man

I don't believe less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat fat, thin thin and enough is enough.

Less is more only when more is too much.

Adequacy is sufficient. All else is superfluous.

Let him who has enough ask for nothing more.

In my life, what I want and what I need are exactly the same. Anything in excess of needs is burdensome to me. You couldn't give me anything I don't need. I am penniless, but have difficulty remaining so. Several of my well meaning, well-to-do friends have offered me large sums of money, which I of course refused.

One real world is enough.

Simplicity requires ruthlessness.

I've always believed that you often need less. You don't need to hear why people are friends, you don't need to hear why people are roommates, you don't need to hear why someone would help a friend to do something.

We don't need as much as we have. Hardly any of us need as much money as we have. It's true what they say about the best things in life being free.

Buy things you truly love, things that are special, but not a lot of them. It’s about value, not quantity.

I’ve stripped my life down,” he told me. “I don’t need much. I have all the company I want to keep right in here.” He shot himself in the head with his fingers. “People don’t understand about the need to live simply. They make appointments all day. They even schedule their own deaths. The first time they’ll have freedom to really be themselves is when they no longer exist. But up here, there’s nothing but me and the sky. A million billion stars.

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.

Some people say that less is more. But I think more is more.

That which sufficeth is not little.

Renouncing things is less difficult than people believe: it's all a matter of getting started. Once you've succeeded in dispensing with something you thought essential, you realize you can also do without something else, then without many other things.

How many things I can do without!

The greatest part of what we say and do is really unnecessary. If a man takes this to heart, he will have more leisure and less uneasiness.

To be satisfied with little is hard, to be satisfied with a lot is impossible.