Q0029

Seneca

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

There are more things that frighten us than crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Thinker Seneca
School Stoicism
Source Letters to Lucilius, Ep. 13.4
Theme Fear
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Letters to Lucilius, Ep. 13.4, within the tradition of Stoicism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of fear, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Seneca's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Seneca. (n.d.). There are more things that frighten us than crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0029

MLA: Seneca. “There are more things that frighten us than….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0029.

Chicago: Seneca. “There are more things that frighten us than….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0029.

Same thinker

More from Seneca

  1. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
  2. Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.
  3. All else belongs to others; time alone is ours.
  4. If you wish to be loved, love.
  5. There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

All quotations by Seneca

Same theme

More on fear

  1. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
  2. When human life lay foully for all to see, crushed to the earth under heavy religion…
  3. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
  4. the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
  5. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.

Browse the fear theme