The time they do enjoy is short and flies by quickly. They make it even shorter by their own choices. They rush from one pleasure to another. They can't stick with any single passion for long. Their days aren't long — they just hate them. But oh, how short the nights feel when they're with prostitutes or drinking! This is why poets write such foolish myths. They encourage our worst impulses by telling stories like Jupiter doubling the length of a night to satisfy his lust. Isn't this just feeding our vices? When we say the gods behave this way, we give ourselves permission to do the same. How could nights that cost so much money not feel incredibly short? These people waste their days longing for night, then waste their nights dreading the dawn.
Yet the very time which they enjoy is brief and soon past, and is made much briefer by their own fault: for they run from one pleasure to another, and are not able to devote themselves consistently to one passion: their days are not long, but odious to them: on the other hand, how short they find the nights which they spend with courtezans or over wine? Hence arises that folly of the poets who encourage the errors of mankind by their myths, and declare that Jupiter to gratify his voluptuous desires doubled the length of the night. Is it not adding fuel to our vices to name the gods as their authors, and to offer our distempers free scope by giving them deity for an example? How can the nights for which men pay so dear fail to appear of the shortest? they lose the day in looking forward to the night, and lose the night through fear of the dawn.