It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, playwright and adviser to the emperor Nero, who eventually ordered him to take his own life. He is best known for the Letters to Lucilius and the essay On the Shortness of Life, in which he writes about time, mortality and his own failings plainly and without ornament. His work has stayed in circulation almost without interruption for two millennia.
About this theme: Time
Time is the one theme here where every author writes from the same position — none of them had more of it than they had. Seneca devoted an essay to it, and his central claim is uncomfortable: we are not given a short life, we spend it in a way that makes it seem short.
More by Seneca
More on Time
- Lost time is never found again.— Benjamin Franklin
- The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.— Chinese Proverb
- The life given us by nature is short, but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.— Cicero
- The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.— Nikola Tesla
- Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.— William Shakespeare