Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

"They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn."

"True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence on the future; not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient." 

"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to use for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. 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 realise that it has passed away before we knew it was passing."

"The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way." 

... On The Shortness Of Life, Lucius A Seneca

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