On the Shortness of Life

by Seneca

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.

Many are occupied by either pursuing other people’s money or complaining about their own.

‘It is a small part of life we really live.’ Indeed, all the rest is not life but merely time.

But can anyone dare to complain about another’s pride when he himself never has time for himself?

You will find no one willing to share out his money; but to how many does each of us divide up his life! 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.