Time to Live

Category: Seneca

  • When is it Enough?

    The thought for today is one which I discovered in Epicurus; for I am wont to cross over even into the enemy’s camp — not as a deserter, but as a scout. He says: “Contented poverty is an honorable estate.”

    Indeed, if it be contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbor’s property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come?

    Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and second, to have what is enough.

    Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic

  • Start Saving Now

    I do not regard a man as poor, if the little [time] which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early. For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask. Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile.

    Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic

  • Time Management

    The largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose.

    What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death’s hands.

    Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic