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Quotes From Seneca: ‘On the Shortness of Life’

Here’s an absolute must-read.

I have just finished Seneca’s ‘On the Shortness of Life’ and it’s left a massive impression on me. Particularly the first essay is phenomenally good. It consists of insights into the art of living, reason and morality, and talks about frugal living and how to properly use the time that you have on this earth.

It’s brilliant.

In this post I’m sharing some quotes from Seneca’s classic literary and philosophical masterpiece. I have to – they’re too good not to.

On the Shortness of Life - Quotes from Seneca

I really couldn’t find a more appropriate picture

10 Quotes From Seneca’s ‘On the Shortness of Life’

Men do not let anyone seize their estates, and if there is the slightest dispute about their boundaries they rush to stones and arms; but they allow others to encroach on their lives — why, they themselves even invite in those who will take over their lives. You will find no one willing to share out his money; but to how many does each of us divide up his life! 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.

Call to mind when you ever had a fixed purpose; how few days have passed as you had planned; when you were ever at your own disposal; when your face wore its natural expression; when your mind was undisturbed…

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

As far as I am concerned, I know that I have lost not wealth but distractions. The body’s needs are few: it wants to be free from cold, to banish hunger and thirst with nourishment; if we long for anything more we are exerting ourselves to serve our vices, not our needs.

You must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbor, 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.

Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.

The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

You really must consider how small your bodies are. Is it not madness and the worst form of derangement to want so much though you can hold so little?

Read it.