Plain
Seneca — The Senator

Good God, even if you powerful men lived for a thousand years, your lives would still be too short. Your vices would devour any amount of time you were given. No wonder our normal lifespan — which could actually be stretched by using common sense, even though nature rushes it along — slips right through your fingers. You don't grab hold of time or try to hold it back. You don't try to slow down the fastest thing in the world. Instead, you let it pass by as if it were worthless and you could always get more.

On the Shortness of Life, Section 6 23 of 87
Death & Mortality What Matters Most
Seneca — The Senator Original

By Hercules, that life of you great men, even though it should last for more than a thousand years, is still a very short one: those vices of yours would swallow up any extent of time: no wonder if this our ordinary span, which, though Nature hurries on, can be enlarged by common sense, soon slips away from you; for you do not lay hold of it or hold it back, and try to delay the swiftest of all things, but you let it pass as though it were a useless thing and you could supply its place.

On the Shortness of Life, Section 6 23 of 87
Seneca — The Senator

People still debate whether he killed himself. He died from a sudden wound to his groin. Some questioned whether he did it to himself, but no one argued that his death came at a convenient time. I could mention many more examples like this. These were people others considered the happiest in the world. Yet they themselves gave honest testimony about their real feelings. They hated everything they had done throughout their entire lives. But their complaints changed nothing — not in others, and not in themselves. After speaking these words, their feelings always went back to the same old patterns.

On the Shortness of Life, Section 6 22 of 87
Death & Mortality What Matters Most
Seneca — The Senator Original

It is a stock question whether he committed suicide: for he fell by a sudden wound in the groin, and some doubted whether his death was caused by his own hand, though none disputed its having happened most seasonably. It would be superfluous to mention more who, while others thought them the happiest of men, have themselves borne true witness to their own feelings, and have loathed all that they have done for all the years of their lives: yet by these complaints they have effected no alteration either in others or in themselves: for after these words have escaped them their feelings revert to their accustomed frame.

On the Shortness of Life, Section 6 22 of 87
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Ancient philosophy, in plain English.

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