Seneca De Brevitate Vitae Quotes

You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don't notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply - though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

The busy man is busy with everything except living; there is nothing that is more difficult to learn how to do right.

Unless we are complete ingrates, the lives of all those men that preceded us should be seen as sacred. Their collective existence paved the way for our own time on Earth. Because

Often it is better to hide an illness from the patient, because just the mere awareness of a disease can bring about death.

Life is divided into three parts: what was, what is and what shall be. Of these three periods, the present is short, the future is doubtful and the past alone is certain. Only

A grey-haired wrinkled man has not necessarily lived long. More accurately, he has existed long.

We all rush through life torn between a desire for the future and a weariness of the present. But he who devotes his time to his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears for tomorrow. How

The problem, Paulinus, is not that we have a short life, but that we waste time.

Life is long and there is enough of it for satisfying personal accomplishments if we use our hours well.

Those who choose to have no real purpose in life are ever rootless and dissatisfied, tossed by their aimlessness into ever-changing situations.

You live as if you will live forever, no care for your mortality ever enters your head, you pay no mind to how much time has already gone by.

The amount of life we truly live is small. For our existence on Earth is not Life, but merely Time.

Most human beings, Paulinus, complain about the meanness of nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, and because this spell of time that has been given to us rushes by so swiftly and rapidly that with very few exceptions life ceases for the rest of us just when we are getting ready for it.

A pleasure that is ephemeral brings no true satisfaction to any man. How miserable must be the lives of those folk who labor so hard for something that once gained they must work even harder to keep. They

[...] Preferirebbero vedere sottosopra lo Stato piuttosto che la loro capigliatura!Poco gli imposta se la testa è malata,basta faccia bella figura:meglio essere ben pettinati che dignitosi e onesti" [De brevitate vitae]

Apparently, when the arrogant King of Persia beheld the vastness of his troops spread out across boundless plains, he shed copious tears when he realized that not one man amongst his prodigious army would be alive in a hundred years’ time.

It is fair to say that those who make Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and other giants of philosophy their daily companions will be more fully engaged in a rewarding life. None of these friends will be too busy to welcome you inside their home, none will fail to leave his caller feeling refreshed after an appointment. Any man can spend time with them day or night.

You live as if you will live forever, no care for your mortality ever enters your head, you pay no mind to how much time has already gone by. You waste time as if it was a limitless resource, when any moment you spend on someone else or some matter is potentially your last.

Why do you wait,” asks he. “Why are you idle? If you don’t seize the day, it escapes.” Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore you must compete with time’s haste in the speed of using it, and, like a gush of water that blasts past and will not always flow calmly, you must drink fast.

Some men even prepare for whatever lies after death – a necropolis of tombs, countless public dedications, blazing funeral pyres that can be seen from the stars and ostentatious funerals worthy of demi-gods. But in the end, their funerals were just like their lives – over in a short burst of flames.

Turannius was an old man who, after he turned ninety, was released from his official duties by an act of Caesar. He had the idea to be laid out on his bed, surrounded by family, and to receive visitors as if he was dead. The entire household mourned the passing of its master and the sorrow was only lifted when the crazy loon returned to his normal routine of idle busy-ness. Hard to believe that a man could become so bored as to get a thrill out of being dead for a few days.

The only really leisured people are those who devote time to acquiring true knowledge rather than trivia.  Such people are not content to live ‘in the moment’ exclusively but show a keen awareness of history, of all the years that have gone before them and they know that the amount of time they have left is uncertain and finite.

The only really leisured people are those who devote time to acquiring true knowledge rather than trivia. 

A man’s past is forever set in stone. There

Why are people so bitter, Paulinus? Nature has been good to us, not cruel. A life well spent can truly be a long life.

Omnia tamquam mortales timetis, omnia tamquam immortales concupiscitis. (От всичко се страхувате като смъртни, за всичко копнеете като безсмъртни). - De brevitate vitae, III. 4

Non exiguum temporis habemus, sed multum perdidimus.

The default mood of the busy man is misery. He lives a wretched existence. He walks with strangers in a world somewhere between love and hate.

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Illum ipsum consulatum suum non sine causa, sed sine fine laudabat. He praised his own achievements not without cause but without end. Seneca Minor, Dialogorum, X, 5.1 (De Brevitate Vitae)

In protecting their wealth men are tight-fisted, but when it comes to the matter of time, in the case of the one thing in which it is wise to be parsimonious, they are actually generous to a fault.

It is too late to begin living life just as it is ending! What stubborn denial of mortality to delay dreams to after your fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to plan on starting your life at a point that not everyone gets to.