Plain
Seneca — The Senator

Time won't make a sound or warn you how fast it's moving. It will slip by quietly. No king can command it to slow down. No nation can wish it to stop. It will move at the same pace it started with on your first day. It will never turn aside or pause. So what does this mean? You're busy with your tasks, but life is racing ahead. Death will arrive eventually, and you'll have to face him whether you want to or not.

On the Shortness of Life, Section 8 34 of 87
Death & Mortality What Matters Most
Seneca — The Senator Original

It will make no disturbance, it will give you no warning of how fast it flies: it will move silently on: it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the wish of a nation: as it started on its first day, so it will run: it will never turn aside, never delay. What follows, then? Why! you are busy, but life is hurrying on: death will be here some time or other, and you must attend to him, whether you will or no.

On the Shortness of Life, Section 8 34 of 87
Seneca — The Senator

You might think these people don't understand how precious time is. But they do. They tell the people they love most that they would gladly give up some of their own years for them. And they actually do give their years away — they just don't realize they're doing it. They waste their time in ways that help no one, not even the people they claim to love. The problem is they can't see where their time comes from or where it goes. So they don't mind wasting what they can't see. But here's the truth: no one will ever give you back those lost years. No one can restore them. Once your life starts moving, it won't stop or reverse. It won't let you undo what you've already done.

On the Shortness of Life, Section 8 33 of 87
Death & Mortality What Matters Most
Seneca — The Senator Original

Yet you have no reason to suppose that they do not know how dear a thing time is: they are wont to say to those whom they especially love that they are ready to give them a part of their own years. They do give them, and know not that they are giving them; but they give them in such a manner that they themselves lose them without the others gaining them. They do not, however, know whence they obtain their supply, and therefore they are able to endure the waste of what is not seen: yet no one will give you back your years, no one will restore them to you again: your life will run its course when once it has begun, and will neither begin again or efface what it has done.

On the Shortness of Life, Section 8 33 of 87
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Ancient philosophy, in plain English.

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