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.

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

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.

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.

Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future.