It is hard to retain what you learn unless you practice it.
Difficile est tenere quae acceperis nisi exerceas.
Philosophers
Seneca
Seneca (c. 4 BC - 65 AD), Stoic philosopher and Nero's advisor, wrote on time, anger, and adversity from the heart of Roman power. His Moral Letters and On the Shortness of Life remain practical self-mastery guides.
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Seneca's Other Quotes
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.
Fire tests gold; adversity tests strong people.
As in all things, we suffer from excess in reading too. Many books are a burden, not an ornament.
It is the quality of your life that matters, not its length.
Anger, if not obeyed, fades; once it enters the mind and pervades habit, vice becomes law.
Related Quotes
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
-- Marcus Aurelius
It is the task of one rightly oriented toward others to draw the circles in toward the centre.
-- Hierocles
It is not learning that makes people good, but practice.
-- Gaius Musonius Rufus
The knowledge and contemplation of nature is somehow defective and incomplete unless action follows.
-- Panaetius
The beginning is half of the whole.
-- Aristotle
Virtue is a matter of deeds, not words.
-- Antisthenes