“Call to mind when you ever had a fixed purpose; how few days have passed as you had planned; when you were ever at your own disposal; when your face wore its natural expression; when your mind was undisturbed; what work you have achieved in such a long life; how many have plundered your life when you were unaware of your losses; how much you have lost through ground- less sorrow,silly joy, greedy desire, or the seductions of society; how little of your own was left: to you. You will realize that you are dying prematurely. So what is the reason for this? You are living as whether 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 final. You act like mortals in all that you dismay, and like immortals in all that you desire. You will hear many people saying: ‘When I am fifty I shall retire into leisure; when I am sixty I shall give up public duties.’ And what guarantee conclude you have of a longer life? Who will allow your course to proceed as you arrange it? Aren’t you ashamed to sustain for yourself just the remnants of your life, or to devote to wisdom only that time which cannot be spent on any business? How late it is to launch really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality,and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to launch life from a point at which few have arrived!” - “On the Shortness of Life, and ” Senec
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