On the Shortness of Life, Section 1

Beginning of On the Shortness of Life

Seneca — The Senator

We haven't been given a short life. We've just wasted a lot of it. Life is long enough to do great things — if you stop throwing it away. We have plenty of time, but only if we use it right. When we waste our days on luxury and laziness, when we don't spend them on anything worthwhile, we suddenly realize it's all over. We never even noticed how quickly it slipped by. Here's the truth: we don't get a short life. We make it short. We're not poor in days — we're wasteful with them. When great wealth falls into the hands of a bad owner, it disappears right away. But even a modest fortune grows when it's given to a wise manager. Our life works the same way. It offers great opportunities to anyone who knows how to use it well.

Seneca — The Senator Original

We do not have a very short time assigned to us, but we lose a great deal of it: life is long enough to carry out the most important projects: we have an ample portion, if we do but arrange the whole of it aright: but when it all runs to waste through luxury and carelessness, when it is not devoted to any good purpose, then at the last we are forced to feel that it is all over, although we never noticed how it glided away. Thus it is: we do not receive a short life, but we make it a short one, and we are not poor in days, but wasteful of them. When great and kinglike riches fall into the hands of a bad master, they are dispersed straightway, but even a moderate fortune, when bestowed upon a wise guardian, increases by use: and in like manner our life has great opportunities for one who knows how to dispose of it to the best advantage.

Seneca — The Senator

Most people, Paulinus, complain that nature has been unfair to us. They say we are born with too little time, and that even the time we are given slips away far too quickly — so fast that most people die just as they're getting ready to really live. It's not just ordinary people and the uneducated masses who grieve over what they see as this universal tragedy. Even great thinkers have complained about it. That's where doctors get their famous saying: 'Art is long, but life is short.' That's also why Aristotle — a wise man who should have known better — picked a fight with Nature herself. He was angry that she gave some animals lifespans of ten or fifteen centuries, while humans, despite being capable of such great things, got such a brief time on earth.

Seneca — The Senator Original

The greater part of mankind, my Paulinus, complains of the unkindness of Nature, because we are born only for a short space of time, and that this allotted period of life runs away so swiftly, nay so hurriedly, that with but few exceptions men's life comes to an end just as they are preparing to enjoy it: nor is it only the common herd and the ignorant vulgar who mourn over this universal misfortune, as they consider it to be: this reflection has wrung complaints even from great men. Hence comes that well-known saying of physicians, that art is long but life is short: hence arose that quarrel, so unbefitting a sage, which Aristotle picked with Nature, because she had indulged animals with such length of days that some of them lived for ten or fifteen centuries, while man, although born for many and such great exploits, had the term of his existence cut so much shorter.

On the Shortness of Life, Section 1 — In Plain English