The Shortness of Life

Seneca — On the Shortness of Life

Life is long enough if you know how to use it. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we receive not a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-provided but wasteful of it. Just as when ample and princely wealth falls to a bad owner it is squandered in a moment, but wealth however small, if entrusted to a good custodian, increases with use, so our lifetime extends widely if you manage it properly.

Seneca wrote On the Shortness of Life (De Brevitate Vitae) around 49 AD as an essay-length letter arguing that life is not actually short — we just squander most of it. This opening passage sets up his central image: time is like wealth, ruined by a careless owner but multiplied by a careful one.