Even if there were many years left to you, you would have had to spend them frugally in order to have enough for the necessary thing; but as it is, when your time is so scant, what madness it is to learn superfluous things! Seneca we suffer more often in imagination. If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own. I had already arranged my coffers; I was already looking about to see some stretch of water on which I might embark for purposes of trade, some state revenues that I might handle, and some merchandise that I might acquire. We may spurn the very constraints that hold us. Some are tormented by a passion for army life, always intent on inflicting dangers on others or anxious about danger to themselves.
You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. Indeed, he boasts that he himself lived on less than a penny, but that Metrodorus, whose progress was not yet so great, needed a whole penny. Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Seneca all nature is too little paris. "No man is so faint-hearted that he would rather hang in suspense for ever than drop once for all. E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. You say; "shall it come to me without any little offering? By the toil of others we are led into the presence of things which have been brought from darkness into light. "No delicate breeze brings comfort with icy breath of wind.
The thing you describe is not friendship but a business deal, looking to the likely consequences, with advantage as its goal. I can give you a saying of your friend Epicurus and thus clear this letter of its obligation. The writer asks him to hasten as fast as he can, and beat a retreat before some stronger influence comes between and takes from him the liberty to withdraw. On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (Deep Summary + Infographic. "Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.
And so, when he had already survived by many years his friend Metrodorus, he added in a letter these last words, proclaiming with thankful appreciation the friendship that had existed between them: "So greatly blest were Metrodorus and I that it has been no harm to us to be unknown, and almost unheard of, in this well-known land of Greece. " Yet they allow others to trespass upon their life -- nay, they themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it. Otherwise, the cot-bed and the rags are slight proof of his good intentions, if it has not been made clear that the person concerned endures these trials not from necessity but from preference. Seneca life is not short. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. "If you wish to make Pythocles honorable, do not add to his honors, but subtract from his desires"; "if you wish Pythocles to have pleasure for ever, do not add to his pleasures, but subtract from his desires"; "if you wish to make Pythocles an old man, filling his life to the full, do not add to his years, but subtract from his desires. " I should accordingly deem more fortunate the man who has never had any trouble with himself; but the other, I feel, has deserved better of himself, who has won a victory over the meanness of his own nature, and has not gently led himself, but has wrestled his way, to wisdom.
To what goal are you straining? The greatest remedy for anger is delay. The man who submits and surrenders himself to her is not kept waiting; he is emancipated on the spot. But let me pay off my debt and say farewell: " Real wealth is poverty adjusted to the law of Nature. " And yet this utterance was heard in the very factory of pleasure, when Epicurus said: " Today and one other day have been the happiest of all! "
So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. The body is, let us suppose, free from pain; what increase can there be to this absence of pain? I can show you at this moment in the writings of Epicurus a graded list of goods just like that of our own school. There have been found persons who crave something more after obtaining everything; so blind are their wits and so readily does each man forget his start after he has got under way. Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands. I shall borrow from Epicurus: " The acquisition of riches has been for many men, not an end, but a change, of troubles. "