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Seneca - On the Shortness of Life

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.

Life is long if you know how to use it.

It is a small part of life we really live [...] all the rest is not life but merely time.

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.

For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbour, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage of opposing winds? He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about.

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. [...] You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. [...] The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

Life's finest day for wretched mortals here is always first to flee.

If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own.

Seneca - On the Shortness of Life (Amazon affiliate link).

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