On the Shortness of Life: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

by James Harris

"The part of life we really live is small”. All the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

Men who do not suffer threats are quick to prepare for war over the slightest preconceived danger.

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

Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart only that time to devote to yourself? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live!

no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is occupied with many things—eloquence cannot exist, nor expansive studying—since the mind, when its interests are divided, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it.

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

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

Can anything be sillier than the point of view of some people—I mean those who boast of their foresight?

The fairest day in an unfortunate mortals' life: Is a day lost. "Why do you delay,"

just so with this unceasing and most swift journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether awake or sleeping; those who are engrossed become aware of it only at the end.

busy men find life very short.

Present time is very brief, so brief, indeed, that to some there seems to be none; for it is always in motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it has come.

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 unhappy perceive too late that for such a long while they have been occupied in doing nothing.

And so, my dearest people, tear yourself away from the crowd, and at length withdraw into a peaceful harbour.

For certain ailments must be treated while the patient is kept in ignorance; knowledge of their disease has caused the death of many.