Simply Beautiful
Via : policraticus
Inflicted : debate
ET Al : http://www.livejournal.com/community/debate/4003706.html
"Ars longa, brevis vita.
The majority of mortals, fellow debaters, complain bitterly of the
spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, because
even this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly
that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready
to live. Nor is it merely the common herd and the unthinking crowd that bemoan
what is, as men deem it, an universal ill; the same feeling has called forth
complaint also from men who were famous. ... 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. But when it is
squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced
at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we
were aware that it was passing. So it is-the life we receive is not short, but
we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as
great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands
of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good
guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.
--On the Shortness of Life, Seneca."