On the shortness of life

by Seneca

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it.

Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.

No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.

You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals.

What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!

There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.

Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present.

But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow.

And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles; he has not lived long—he has existed long.

The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day.

the battle-line must be turned by a bold attack, not by inflicting pinpricks;

however small the amount of it, it is abundantly sufficient, and therefore, whenever his last day shall come, the wise man will not hesitate to go to meet death with steady step.

But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing.

They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.