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    On the Shortness of Life
    On the Shortness of Life
    On the Shortness of Life
    Ebook89 pages51 minutes

    On the Shortness of Life

    By Seneca

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    About this ebook

    Originally written around 49 AD for his father-in-law Paulinus, Seneca here brings up many Stoic principles on the nature of time, namely that people waste much of it in meaningless pursuits. According to Seneca, nature gives people enough time to do what is really important and it is up to the individual to allot it properly.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGIANLUCA
    Release dateFeb 3, 2020
    ISBN9788835371236
    Author

    Seneca

    The writer and politician Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) was one of the most influential figures in the philosophical school of thought known as Stoicism. He was notoriously condemned to death by enforced suicide by the Emperor Nero.

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    • 3/5
      Full of insights into the folly of humans; what they strive for, what they cherish, and how they fool themselves.
    • 5/5
      A profound essay about the meaning and point of life. Definitely worth the read.

    Book preview

    On the Shortness of Life - Seneca

    1932

    Chapter 1

    1. The majority of mortals, Paulinus,1 complain bitterly of the spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, because even this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live. Nor is it merely the common herd and the unthinking crowd that bemoan what is, as men deem it, an universal ill; the same feeling has called forth complaint also from men who were famous. It was this that made the greatest of physicians exclaim that life is short, art is long;2 it was this that led Aristotle,3 while expostulating with Nature, to enter an indictment most unbecoming to a wise man—that, in point of age, she has shown such favour to animals that they drag out five or ten lifetimes,4 but that a much shorter limit is fixed for man, though he is born for so many and such great achievements. It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.

    Chapter 2

    2. Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: The part of life we really live is small.5 For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time. Vices beset us and surround us on every side, and they do not

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