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.

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.

Why do we complain about nature? She has acted kindly: life is long if you know how to use it.

Vices surround and assail men from every side, and do not allow them to rise again and lift their eyes to discern the truth, but keep them overwhelmed and rooted in their desires. Never can they recover their true selves.

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

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.

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

He then goes on to bewail his former life, to complain of the present, and to despair of the future.

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.

Believe me, 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.

Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of the present. But the man who spends all his time on his own needs, who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day.

Life’s finest day for wretched mortals here Is always first to flee.

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

Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. All the years that have passed before them are added to their own.

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

All the greatest blessings create anxiety, and Fortune is never less to be trusted than when it is fairest. To preserve prosperity we need other prosperity, and to support the prayers which have turned out well we have to make other prayers.

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

For certain ailments must be treated while the patient is unaware of them: knowing about their disease has caused the death of many.

In this kind of life you will find much that is worth your study: the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, the knowledge of how to live and die, and a life of deep tranquillity.

So let those people go on weeping and wailing whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity, let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries;

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

every individual can make himself happy. External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence in either direction: prosperity does not elevate the sage and adversity does not depress him.

For he has always made the effort to rely as much as possible on himself and to derive all delight from himself.

Never have I trusted Fortune, even when she seemed to offer peace.

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

So I have never believed that there was any genuine good in the things which everyone prays for; what is more, I have found them empty and daubed with showy and deceptive colours, with nothing inside to match their appearance.

Absolutely every type of person has hastened into the city which offers high rewards for both virtues and vices. Take a roll-call of all of them and ask each where he comes from: you will see that most of them have left their own homes and come to a very great and beautiful city, but not their own.

It was not made from heavy, earthly material, but came down from that heavenly spirit: but heavenly things are by nature always in motion, fleeing and driven on extremely fast.

How silly then to imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even self-preservation in continual and very rapid change.

In a word, you will hardly find a single country still inhabited by its original natives: everywhere the people are of mixed and imported stock.

So fate has decreed that nothing maintains the same condition forever.

that wherever we come we have the same order of nature to deal with.

For how little have we lost, when the two finest things of all will accompany us wherever we go, universal nature and our individual virtue.

The world you see, nature’s greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain.

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?

Petty is the mind which delights in earthly things: it should be led away to those things which appear everywhere equally, everywhere equally lustrous.

the more massively they raise the roofs of their dining-halls, so much the more will there be to cut off the sight of heaven.

‘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.

But there is no evil in poverty, as anyone knows who has not yet arrived at the lunatic state of greed and luxury, which ruin everything. For how little is needed to support a man!

As far as I am concerned, I know that I have lost not wealth but distractions. 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.

Why do you seek out so many things? To be sure, our ancestors were unhappy, whose virtue even now props up our vices, who procured their food with their own hands, who slept on the ground, whose dwellings did not yet glitter with gold nor their temples with precious stones

How then can you think that it is the amount of money that matters and not the attitude of mind?

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. So an exile’s poverty brings no hardship; for no place of exile is so barren that it cannot abundantly support a man.

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

the same feature is found in every desire which arises not from a lack but from a vice.

So the man who restrains himself within the bounds set by nature will not notice poverty; the man who exceeds these bounds will be pursued by poverty however rich he is.

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...

‘If you have the strength to tackle any one aspect of misfortune you can tackle all. When once virtue has toughened the mind it renders it invulnerable on every side. If greed, the most overmastering plague of the human race, has relaxed its grip, ambition will not stand in your way.

No man is despised by another unless he is first despised by himself.