The present has to be used while it is available because delay does not pause the day that is already moving away.
On the Shortness of Life, Chapter IX; Basore translation, in Seneca’s attack on indefinite delay and preparation for a future life.
“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
Seneca warns that postponement is itself a use of finite life: waiting for a more convenient future can become the very way the available present is lost.
Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 1, “On Saving Time,” Richard M. Gummere translation. The line follows Seneca’s advice to hold every hour and precedes his claim that nothing is truly ours except time.
“They spend life in making ready to live!”
Preparation becomes self-defeating when it permanently replaces the life it was supposed to make possible.
On the Shortness of Life, Chapter IX; Seneca describes people who stay busy preparing for a future life.
“Postponement is the greatest waste of life.”
Delay is costly because it exchanges a real day for a future that remains uncertain and therefore cannot be spent yet.
On the Shortness of Life, Chapter IX; sentence in Seneca’s criticism of distant plans that steal the present.
“Do every act of thy life as if it were the last.”
Treating action as potentially final concentrates attention on doing the present duty carefully instead of postponing integrity or focus.
Meditations, Book II, section 5, George Long translation; this clause occurs inside a longer instruction about dignity and reason.
“Never leave that till tomorrow, which you can do to-day.”
The maxim turns prompt action into a habit: work that can reasonably be completed now should not be needlessly transferred to an uncertain tomorrow.
The Way to Wealth; a Poor Richard maxim on delay and useful employment of time.
“Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years.”
Mortality is used to challenge postponement: limited time makes present conduct more important than fantasies of an indefinitely extended future.
Meditations, Book IV, section 17, in George Long’s translation.
