On the Shortness of Life

“How late it is to begin life just when we have to be leaving it!”

“Our swiftness in making use of our time ought therefore to vie with the swiftness of time itself, and we ought to drink of it as we should of a fast-running torrent which will not be always running.”

“It is the privilege of a tranquil and peaceful mind to review all the parts of its life: but the minds of busy men are like animals under the yoke, and cannot bend aside or look back.”

“Men set the greatest store upon presents or pensions, and hire out their work, their services, or their care in order to gain them: no one values time: they give it much more freely, as though it cost nothing.”

“We do not receive a short life, but we make it a short one, and we are not poor in days, but wasteful of them.”

“One’s whole life must be spent in learning how to live, and, which may perhaps surprise you more, one’s whole life must be spent in learning how to die.”

“Postponement is the greatest waste of life: it wrings day after day from us, and takes away the present by promising something hereafter.”