1. Citations
  2. Auteurs
  3. Sénèque

Sénèque citations
Page 6

Sénèque , né à Corduba, dans le sud de l'Espagne, entre l'an 4 av. J.-C. et l'an 1 apr. J.-C., mort le 12 avril 65 apr. J.-C., est un philosophe de l'école stoïcienne, un dramaturge et un homme d'État romain du Ier siècle. Il est parfois nommé Sénèque le Philosophe, Sénèque le Tragique ou Sénèque le Jeune pour le distinguer de son père, Sénèque l'Ancien.

Conseiller à la cour impériale sous Caligula, exilé à l'avènement de Claude puis rappelé comme précepteur de Néron, Sénèque joue un rôle important de conseiller auprès de ce dernier avant d'être discrédité et acculé au suicide. Ses traités philosophiques comme De la colère, De la vie heureuse ou De la brièveté de la vie, et surtout ses Lettres à Lucilius exposent ses conceptions philosophiques stoïciennes. Pour lui :



« Le souverain bien, c'est une âme qui méprise les événements extérieurs et se réjouit par la vertu. »



Ses tragédies constituent l'un des meilleurs exemples du théâtre tragique latin avec des œuvres qui nourriront le théâtre classique français du XVIIe siècle comme Médée, Œdipe ou Phèdre. Wikipedia  

✵ 4 av. J.-C. – 12. avril 65 ap. J.-C.   •   Autres noms Seneca mladší, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca der Jüngere), Lucius Annaues Seneca, Луций Анней Сенека
Sénèque photo
Sénèque: 241   citations 2   J'aime

Sénèque citations célèbres

“C'est d'âme qu'il faut changer, et non de climat.”
Animum debes mutare, non cœlum.

Sénèque livre Lettres à Lucilius

la
Lettres à Lucilius (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium)

“Nul ne sait répondre aux bienfaits que le sage : l’insensé aussi y répondra d’une manière telle quelle, selon sa portée; le savoir lui manquera plutôt que la volonté. La volonté ne s’apprend point.”
Nemo referre gratiam scit nisi sapiens : stultus quoque, utcumque scit et quemadmodum potest, referat; scientia illi potius, quam voluntas desit. Velle non discitur.

Sénèque livre Lettres à Lucilius

Nemo referre gratiam scit nisi sapiens : stultus quoque, utcumque scit et quemadmodum potest, referat ; scientia illi potius, quam voluntas desit. Velle non discitur.
la
Lettres à Lucilius (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium)

“La mort n'est ni un bien ni un mal : en effet, il faut être quelque chose pour pouvoir être bon ou mauvais; mais ce qui en soi n'est rien et ramène tout au néant, ne nous abandonne à aucune Fortune : en effet, les maux et les biens s'exercent sur la matière. La Fortune n'a pas prise sur ce que la Nature a laissé échapper et celui qui n'est plus ne peut-être malheureux.”

Sénèque Consolation à Marcia

Consolation à Marcia (Ad Marciam de consolatione)

“La mauvaise Fortune ne brise que celui que la bonne Fortune a aveuglé.”

Sénèque

Consolation à ma mère Helva (Ad Helviam matrem de consolatione)

“Si un grand homme tombe, c'est un grand homme qui est à terre et je dirai qu'on ne le méprise pas plus qu'on ne piétine les ruines d'un temple consacré que les personnes pieuses révèrent tout autant que si les murs étaient encore debout.”

Sénèque

Consolation à ma mère Helva (Ad Helviam matrem de consolatione)

Sénèque Citations

“[…] un malheur n'a jamais que l'importance que nous lui accordons.”

Sénèque Consolation à Marcia

Consolation à Marcia (Ad Marciam de consolatione)

“Personne ne meurt trop tôt puisque personne n'était destiné à vivre plus longtemps qu'il n'a vécu.”

Sénèque Consolation à Marcia

Consolation à Marcia (Ad Marciam de consolatione)

personnes

“Là où il n'y a plus d'amélioration possible, le déclin est proche.”

Sénèque Consolation à Marcia

Consolation à Marcia (Ad Marciam de consolatione)

“Quand tu auras désappris à espérer, je t'apprendrai à vouloir.”

Sénèque

“Si on nous donnait le choix entre ne pas être longtemps heureux et ne jamais l'être, mieux vaudrait un bonheur prêt à s'envoler que pas de bonheur du tout.”

Sénèque Consolation à Marcia

Consolation à Marcia (Ad Marciam de consolatione)

bonheur

“On n'est jamais méprisé par autrui que si on commence par se mépriser soi-même.”

Sénèque

Consolation à ma mère Helva (Ad Helviam matrem de consolatione)

“La véritable joie est une chose sérieuse.”

Sénèque livre Lettres à Lucilius

Lettres à Lucilius (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium)

Joie

“Ce serait une sorte de consolation pour notre fragilité comme pour celle des choses qui nous touchent, si tout était aussi lent à périr qu’à croître; mais le progrès veut du temps pour se développer : la chute vient au pas de course.”

Sénèque
sort , temps , sortie

“La croissance est lente, mais la chute est rapide.”

Sénèque

Sénèque: Citations en anglais

“Allow me, excellent Lucilius, to utter a still bolder word: if any goods could be greater than others, I should prefer those which seem harsh to those which are mild and alluring, and should pronounce them greater. For it is more of an accomplishment to break one’s way through difficulties than to keep joy within bounds.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXVI: On Various Aspects of Virtue

“Great also are the souls of the defenders—men who know that, as long as the path to death lies open, the blockade is not complete, men who breathe their last in the arms of liberty.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXVI: On Various Aspects of Virtue

“But the wise man is fortified against all inroads; he is alert; he will not retreat before the attack of poverty, or of sorrow, or of disgrace, or of pain. He will walk undaunted both against them and among them.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LIX: On Pleasure and Joy

“For what else are you busied with except improving yourself every day, laying aside some error, and coming to understand that the faults which you attribute to circumstances are in yourself?”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter L: On Our Blindness and Its Cure

“Would you really know what philosophy offers to humanity? Philosophy offers counsel.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLVII: On master and slave

“I propose to value them according to their character, and not according to their duties. Each man acquires his character for himself, but accident assigns his duties.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLVII: On master and slave

“At any rate, if you wish to sift doubtful meanings of this kind, teach us that the happy man is not he whom the crowd deems happy, namely, he into whose coffers mighty sums have flowed, but he whose possessions are all in his soul, who is upright and exalted, who spurns inconstancy, who sees no man with whom he wishes to change places, who rates men only at their value as men, who takes Nature for his teacher, conforming to her laws and living as she commands, whom no violence can deprive of his possessions, who turns evil into good, is unerring in judgment, unshaken, unafraid, who may be moved by force but never moved to distraction, whom Fortune when she hurls at him with all her might the deadliest missile in her armoury, may graze, though rarely, but never wound.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLV: On sophistical argumentation

“He that owns himself has lost nothing. But how few men are blessed with ownership of self!”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLII: On Values

“Very often the things that cost nothing cost us the most heavily; I can show you many objects the quest and acquisition of which have wrested freedom from our hands.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLII: On Values

“It is generally agreed that no activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied – not rhetoric or liberal studies – since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLIX: On the Shortness of Life

“Non faciunt meliorem equum aurei freni.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLI: On the god within us

“You must die erect and unyielding.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXVII: On Allegiance to Virtue

“You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXVIII: On travel as a cure for discontent

“You do not know where death awaits you; so be ready for it everywhere.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXVI: On Old Age and Death

“I do not know whether I shall make progress; but I should prefer to lack success rather than to lack faith.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXV: On Reformation

“It was a great deed to conquer Carthage, but a greater deed to conquer death.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXIV: On despising death

“Mucius put his hand into the fire. It is painful to be burned; but how much more painful to inflict such suffering upon oneself!”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXIV: On despising death

“Armies have endured all manner of want, have lived on roots, and have resisted hunger by means of food too revolting to mention. All this they have suffered to gain a kingdom, and—what is more marvellous—to gain a kingdom that will be another’s. Will any man hesitate to endure poverty, in order that he may free his mind from madness?”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XVII: On Philosophy and Riches

“There is no reason why poverty should call us away from philosophy—no, nor even actual want. For when hastening after wisdom, we must endure even hunger. Men have endured hunger when their towns were besieged, and what other reward for their endurance did they obtain than that they did not fall under the conqueror’s power? How much greater is the promise of the prize of everlasting liberty, and the assurance that we need fear neither God nor man! Even though we starve, we must reach that goal.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XVII: On Philosophy and Riches

“But both courses are to be avoided; you should not copy the bad simply because they are many, nor should you hate the many because they are unlike you.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter VII: On crowds

“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

That was indeed agreat benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.
Seneca is quoting Hecato.
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter VI: On precepts and exemplars

“I commend you and rejoice in the fact that you are persistent in your studies, and that, putting all else aside, you make it each day your endeavour to become a better man.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter V: On the Philosopher’s Mean

“No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter IV: On the terrors of death

“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.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter II: On discursiveness in reading

“This spirit thrusts itself forward, confident of commendation and esteem. It is superior to all, monarch of all it surveys; hence it should be subservient to nothing, finding no task too heavy, and nothing strong enough to weigh down the shoulders of a man.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CIV: On Care of Health and Peace of Mind

“Then it is that the height of unhappiness is reached, when men are not only attracted, but even pleased, by shameful things, and when there is no longer any room for a cure, now that those things which once were vices have become habits.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXIX: On Noble Aspirations

“Whoever complains about the death of anyone, is complaining that he was a man. Everyone is bound by the same terms: he who is privileged to be born, is destined to die.”

Help us translate this quote
Seneca the Younger livre Lettres à Lucilius

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XCVIX: On Consolation to the Bereaved

Auteurs similaires

Marc Aurèle photo
Marc Aurèle 12
empereur et philosophe stoïcien romain
Jules César photo
Jules César 6
homme politique et général romain
Cicéron photo
Cicéron 19
orateur, homme politique et philosophe romain
Aristote photo
Aristote 25
philosophe grec
Augustin d'Hippone photo
Augustin d'Hippone 53
philosophe parmis les premiers Chrétien
Plaute photo
Plaute 22
poète comique, acteur, chef de troupe théâtrale et auteur d…
Platon photo
Platon 16
philosophe grec antique
Diogène de Sinope photo
Diogène de Sinope 12
philosophe grec de l'Antiquité associé à l'école cynique
Virgile photo
Virgile 8
poète latin
Protagoras photo
Protagoras 2
philosophe antique