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Seneca
Seneca on time, fear and how to live, with each line traced to the passage it comes from in his letters and essays.
BACKGROUND · GEORGES DE LA TOUR, THE PENITENT MAGDALEN, C. 1640 · THE MET, OPEN ACCESS
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC to AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist and adviser to Nero. His letters and essays are among the most readable things the Stoics left behind.
Where these lines come from
Partly true “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” A close paraphrase of On the Shortness of Life 1.3. John W. Basore’s translation: “It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.” Basore translation
More lines from Seneca, each checked word for word against Gummere’s translation of the Letters, are on the Stoic quote of the day page.
Each line was checked against the original text, or a named translation of it, in September 2026. How we check, and what we will not quote, is set out in our editorial standards.