Seneca the Younger Quotes

Why will no man confess his faults? Because he continues to indulge in them; a man cannot tell his dream till he wakes.

And in fact you're not like everyone else: you weren't ashamed just now to confess bad and even ridiculous things about yourself. Who would confess such things nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped feeling any need for self-judgment.

The reason that men are so slow to confess their vices is because they have not yet abandoned them.

He’d always been willing to confess his faults, for, by admitting them, it was as if he made them no longer exist.

Someone once said to me, 'Some of us choose to live with a lifeboat just a little bit out of our reach.' I'd like to reach a point where I no longer bullshit myself. I think that's the natural human condition - to lie to yourself. Because the truth is painful.

Between these two, the denying of sins, which we have done, and the bragging of sins, which we have not done, what a space, what a compass is there, for millions of millions of sins!

Dishonest people conceal their faults from themselves as well as others, honest people know and confess them.

The vices we scoff at in others laugh at us within ourselves.

You know the expression, 'You're only as sick as your secrets?' I believe that, and I think I try to have my work live by that to a degree.

I really don't feel that any of the pieces I wrote were confessions; there are no revelations about secrets in my life, and actually I have nothing to confess and I certainly do not ask for redemption and there is no reward for confessing that I expect.

Either you look back and deal with your hypocrisy, or you dismiss it.

God knows we are subtle creatures who are more than able to use candour to avoid acknowledging our deceptions of others and ourselves.

I feel that as long as you're honest, you have the opportunity to grow. It's when you shut down, go into denial, and try to start hiding things from yourself and others, that's when you lock in certain behaviors and attitudes that keep you stuck.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

I can deal with imperfection, but I can't deal with people who lie to themselves and lie to the world to make the world feel better.

But I knew one more thing. That people w ho denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger.

In failing to confess, Lord, I would only hide You from myself, not myself from You.

When we do something we're not proud of, a lot of people don't want to look at that, people may say "what people don't know won't hurt them."

If we judge our lives by what we know or by what we say, we can easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we are something we are not; it is wiser to evaluate ourselves by the amount of truth we actually live. This is very humbling.

How easy it is to be "deep": all you have to do is let yourself sink into your own flaws.

I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books. I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams -- like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.

The great chastisement of a knave is not to be known, but to know himself.

It's sometimes easier to reject strong evidence than to admit that we've been wrong, this is information about ourselves worth having.

I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.