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On the Shortness of Life - Wisdom from Seneca

Regis Nisengwe

• 2 min read
On the Shortness of Life - Wisdom from Seneca
Seneca; Image generated with DALL·E 2

In his book, On the Shortness of Life, Seneca offers enduring wisdom on how to use our time well and avoid wasting our time (and our life). The following are some of the best quotes and ideas from the book:

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. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.
  1. “It is not that we have a short time, but that we waste a lot of it.”
  2. The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.
  3. “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.”
  4. 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. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.
  5. “Life is long if you know how to use it.”
  6. “The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today… The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
  7. “Believe me, it is the sign of a great man, and one who is above human error, not to allow his time to be frittered away: he has the longest possible life simply because whatever time was available he devoted entirely to himself.”