On the Shortness of Life

by Seneca

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

But learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.

it is the sign of a great man, and one who is above human error, not to allow his time to be frittered away: he has the longest possible life simply because whatever time was available he devoted entirely to himself.

All those who call you to themselves draw you away from yourself.

So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long.

nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing.

we have to be more careful in preserving what will cease at an unknown point.

The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours.

What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

Life is divided into three periods, past, present and future. Of these, the present is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain.

None of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die. None of them will exhaust your years, but each will contribute his years to yours. With none of these will conversation be dangerous, or his friendship fatal, or attendance on him expensive. From them you can take whatever you wish: it will not be their fault if you do not take your fill from them. What happiness, what a fine old age awaits the man who has made himself a client of these!

it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be.

Honours, monuments, whatever the ambitious have ordered by decrees or raised in public buildings are soon destroyed: there is nothing that the passage of time does not demolish and remove. But it cannot damage the works which philosophy has consecrated: no age will wipe them out, no age diminish them.

life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.

it is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater

And so, my dear Paulinus, extract yourself from the crowd, and as you have been storm-tossed more than your age deserves, you must at last retire into a peaceful harbour.

it is better to understand the balance-sheet of one’s own life than of the corn trade.

If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own.

when you see a man repeatedly wearing the robe of office, or one whose name is often spoken in the Forum, do not envy him: these things are won at the cost of life.

Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing, that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts.

Never have I trusted Fortune, even when she seemed to offer peace. All those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me – money, public office, influence – I relegated to a place whence she could claim them back without bothering me. I kept a wide gap between them and me, with the result that she has taken them away, not torn them away.

No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortune unless he was first deceived by her favours.

the man who is not puffed up in good times does not collapse either when they change.

you will find no place of exile where somebody does not linger because he wants to.

Different reasons roused different peoples to leave their homes; but this at least is clear, nothing has stayed where it was born.

there can be no place of exile within the world since nothing within the world is alien to men.

provided I can commune with these and, so far as humans may, associate with the divine, and provided I can keep my mind always directed upwards, striving for a vision of kindred things – what does it matter what ground I stand on?

‘Being without your country is not misery: you have thoroughly taught yourself by your studies to know that to a wise man every place is his country.

The body’s needs are few: it wants to be free from cold, to banish hunger and thirst with nourishment; if we long for anything more we are exerting ourselves to serve our vices, not our needs.

What need for importing, or laying waste the woodlands, or ransacking the ocean? All around food lies ready which nature has distributed in every place; but men pass it by as though blind to it, and they scour every country, they cross the seas, and they whet their appetite at great expense when at little cost they could satisfy it.

Such is the fate of those who measure wealth not by the standard of reason, whose limits are fixed, but by that of a vicious life-style governed by boundless, uncontrollable caprice. Nothing satisfies greed, but even a little satisfies nature.

it is his fault, not nature’s, if he feels poor.

Life’s necessities are found even in places of exile, superfluities not even in kingdoms. It is the mind that creates our wealth, and this goes with us into exile, and in the harshest desert places it finds sufficient to nourish the body and revels in the enjoyment of its own goods.

A disgraceful death is worse than disgrace:

we are naturally disposed to admire more than anything else the man who shows fortitude in adversity.

Your life was braver from its start and expects more from you: the excuse of being a woman does not apply to one from whom all womanly faults have been absent.

O how many noble deeds of women are lost in obscurity!

However, whatever you do, inevitably your thoughts will turn to me constantly, and none of your other children will come to your mind more often, not because they are less dear to you but because it is natural to touch more often the part that hurts. So this is how you must think of me – happy and cheerful as if in the best of circumstances.

SERENUS:fn1 When I looked into myself, Seneca, some of my vices appeared clearly on the surface, so that I could lay my hand on them; some were more hidden away in the depths; some were not there all the time but return at intervals. These last I would say are the most troublesome: they are like prowling enemies who pounce on you when occasion offers, and allow you neither to be at the ready as in war nor at ease as in peace.

I decide to follow my teacher’s precepts and busy myself in state affairs; I decide to achieve public office – not, of course, because of the purple robe and the lictors’ rods, but so that I can be more ready with help for my friends and relations, for all my fellow-citizens, and then for all mankind.

‘Where is the need,’ I ask, ‘to compose something to last for ages? Why not stop trying to prevent posterity being silent about you? You were born to die, and a silent funeral is less bothersome. So if you must fill your time, write something in a simple style for your own use and not for publication: less toil is needed if you study only for the day.’

when my mind is lifted up by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious for words and longs to match its higher inspiration with its language, and so produces a style that conforms to the impressiveness of the subject matter. Then it is that I forget my rule and principle of restraint, and I am carried too far aloft by a voice no longer my own.

To cut the matter short, this weakness in my good intentions pursues me in every sphere. I fear that I am gradually getting worse, or (which is more worrying) that I am hanging on an edge like someone always on the point of falling, and that perhaps there is more wrong than I myself can see: for we take too ...

With these people, Serenus, it is not that their bodies are insufficiently healed but that they are insufficiently used to health, just as even a calm sea will show some ripples, especially when it has subsided following a storm. So what you need is not those more radical remedies which we have now finished with – blocking yourself here, being angry with yourself there, threatening yourself sternly somewhere else – but the final treatment, confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the right path,

The Greeks call this steady firmness of mind ‘euthymia’ (Democritus wrote a good treatise about it), but I call it tranquillity, as there is no need to imitate and reproduce the form of Greek words: the point at issue must be indicated by some term which should have the sense but not the form of the Greek name.

We are, therefore, seeking how the mind can follow a smooth and steady course, well disposed to itself, happily regarding its own condition and with no interruption to this pleasure, but remaining in a state of peace with no ups and downs: that will be tranquillity.

There are those too who toss around like insomniacs, and keep changing their position until they find rest through sheer weariness. They keep altering the condition of their lives, and eventually stick to that one in which they are trapped not by weariness with further change but by old age which is too sluggish for novelty.

There are those too who suffer not from moral steadfastness but from inertia, and so lack the fickleness to live as they wish, and just live as they have begun. In fact there are innumerable characteristics of the malady, but one effect – dissatisfaction with oneself. This arises from mental instability and from fearful and unfulfilled desires,

unproductive idleness nurtures malice,

the human mind is naturally mobile and enjoys activity. Every chance of stimulation and distraction is welcome to it