Seneca the Younger Quotes

Being against evil doesn't make you good.

It's better to die doing good than to live doing evil.

The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

Evil is not interesting. What is it, chopping off someone's head? We used to do that as kids, you know, you tear up paper dolls and stuff. I know everyone's done it in the history of the world, but maybe everybody was dumb and they were just looking for something interesting to do. What's really interesting and hard is being good.

The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

Do what is right, and you'll have no lasting regrets. Do what is right, and put yourself on the side of truth, goodness, and the best of life.

I know no other sign of superiority than Goodness.

A good man will never suspect his friends of shady actions: this is part of his goodness. A good man will never be suspected by the public of using his goodness to screen villains: this is part of his utility

The unrighteous are never really fortunate.

In the Way of Heaven, there is no partiality of love; it is always on the side of the good man.

The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

Virtue alone is happiness below.

Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.

To be good and to do good-that is the whole of religion.

Remember that if the opportunities for great deeds should never come, the opportunities for good deeds are renewed day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory.

Courage is the ability to do the right thing, all the time, no matter how painful or uncomfortable it might be.

I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

Ethics without virtue is an illusion. What is the highest purpose of ethics? It is to make a person good, that is virtuous.

It is always so much easier to be moral than it is to be spiritual.

All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.

I don't want to put the world to rights... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.

Since the branch of philosophy on which we are at present engaged differs from the others in not being a subject of merely intellectual interest — I mean we are not concerned to know what goodness essentially is, but how we are to become good men, for this alone gives the study its practical value — we must apply our minds to the solution of the problems of conduct.

It's not enough not to be evil. We also actively try to be good.