On the Shortness of Life: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

by James Harris

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 quantity to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.

Vices surround us on every side, and they do not permit us to rise or open our eyes to the truth, but they keep us down once they have overwhelmed us, and chain us to lust. Their victims are never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they have a chance to find a release, like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm has past, they are tossed about, and no rest from their lust is allowed.

How many are lifeless from constant pleasures!

no one claims them self, because in this society everyone acts for the sake of another. Ask about the famous whose names are known by heart, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them: A cultivates B and B cultivates C; no one is his own master.

how much of your time was taken up working for another, how much with a mistress, how much repaying debts, how much with clients for a business which does not serve you, how much in arguing with your wife, how much rushing about the city socializing but gaining nothing from it.

Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days you can say you lived with intent, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever relaxed, what work you have achieved in such a long life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before you have really lived.

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever entered your head, of how much time has already gone by and you take no notice.

You squander time as if you had a full and abundant supply, though one day which you waste on some person or thing could be your last. You have all the fears of mortals and ...

He who always possesses an undiminished and stable liberty, being free and his own master, towers over all others. For what can possibly be above him who is above Fortune or fate? 6.

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

It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and—what will perhaps make you wonder more—it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.

Men treat with little respect the most precious thing in the world; but they are blind to it because it is not physical, because it does not come to the sight of the eyes, and for this reason it is counted as a very cheap thing—or of almost no value at all.

But if each one could have the number of his future years set before him as is possible in the case of the years that have passed, how alarmed those would be who saw only a few remaining, how sparing of them would they be!

They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making it ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something here after. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon tomorrow and wastes the present.

The fairest day in an unfortunate mortals' life: Is a day lost.

"Why do you delay," says he, "Why are you idle? Unless you seize the day, it flees." Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore, you must compete with time's swiftness in the speed of using it, and, from it, like a torrent that rushes by and will not always flow, you must drink quickly. And

But now this vain passion for learning useless things has assailed the Romans also. In the last few days I heard someone saying who was the first Roman general to do this or that; Duilius was the first who won a naval battle, Curius Dentatus was the first who had elephants lead in his triumph. Still, these matters, even if they add nothing to real glory, are nevertheless concerned with services to the state; there will be no profit in such knowledge, nevertheless it wins our attention by reason of the attractiveness of an empty subject.

Out of the noblest of intellects; choose the one into which you wish to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name, but even their property, which there will be no need to guard in a mean spirit; the more people you share it with, the greater it will become.

Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; therefore, the life of those who work hard to gain, must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. New engrossments take the place of the old, hope leads to new hope, ambition to new ambition. They do not seek an end of their unhappiness, but change the cause. Have we been tormented by our own public duty?

Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of unhappiness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall always pray for leisure, but never enjoy it.

And so when you see a man often wearing the robe of office, when you see one whose name is famous in the forum, do not envy him; those things are bought at the price of life. They will waste their years, in order that they may have their name recognised. Life has left some in the middle of their first struggles, before they could ever climb up to the height of their ambition; some, when they have crawled through a thousand indignities to the crowning dignity, have been possessed by the unhappy thought that they have but toiled for an inscription on a tomb; some who have come to extreme old age, while they adjusted it to new hopes as if it were youth, have had their hopes fail from sheer weakness in the middle of their great and shameless endeavours.