Q0428

Seneca

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.
Thinker Seneca
School Stoicism
Source On the Shortness of Life
Theme Time
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with On the Shortness of Life, within the tradition of Stoicism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of time, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Seneca's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Seneca. (n.d.). It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0428

MLA: Seneca. “It is not that we have a short….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0428.

Chicago: Seneca. “It is not that we have a short….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0428.

Same thinker

More from Seneca

  1. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
  2. Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.
  3. There are more things that frighten us than crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
  4. All else belongs to others; time alone is ours.
  5. If you wish to be loved, love.

All quotations by Seneca

Same theme

More on time

  1. Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.
  2. All else belongs to others; time alone is ours.
  3. Claim yourself for yourself.
  4. What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I do not know.
  5. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

Browse the time theme