“Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“But the chief cause of both these ills is that we do not adapt ourselves to the present, but send our thoughts a long way ahead.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“daily to discourse about virtue, and of those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living”
— Plato, Apology
“You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series — Experience (1844)
“Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Straightway then practise saying to every harsh appearance: You are an appearance, and in no manner what you appear to be.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
“bear in mind that every man lives only this present time, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or it is uncertain.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death’s hands.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“To fill the hour,--that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series — Experience (1844)
“And thou wilt give thyself relief if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
The Salon library
This is today’s sample of twelve. The whole collection is in the Salon.
Salon members read all 746 English quotes and the Afrikaans collection too, with every filter,
the plain-words notes from A Year with the Muses, the quotes they save, and a private journal for the lines that stay with them.
Join the SalonAlready a member? Open the library →
Every quote in this collection was verified
against its original public-domain source — the letter, journal, poem or treatise it
truly comes from. No internet folklore, no misattributions.
Start free to bring these voices into your daily practice.