writing

My summary, using 10 quotes from Seneca, read and compiled while on a flight from Helsinki to Tokyo:

“There is nothing that the passage of time does not demolish and remove. But it cannot demolish the works that philosophy has concecrated: no age will wipe them out, no age diminish them.

“Of all people, only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive… We are excluded from no age, but we have access to them all.

“You will find much that is worth your study: the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, the knowledge of how to live and die, and a life of deep tranquility.

“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future. When they come to the end of it, the poor wretches realise too late that for all this time they have been preoccupied in doing nothing… They lose the day on waiting for the night, and the night in fearing the dawn.

“Life is divided into three periods, the past, present and future. Of these, the present is short, the future doubtful, the past is certain. For this last is the one over which Fortune has lost her power, which cannot be brought back to anyone’s control. But this is what preoccupied people lose: for they have no time to look back at their past, and even if they did, it is not pleasant to recall activities they are ashamed of.

“In the present we have only one day at a time, each offering a minute at a time. But all the days of your past will come to your call: You can detain and inspect them at your will — something which the preoccupied have no time to do.

“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future… You are arranging what lies in fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours.

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful in the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

“The man who spends all his time on his own needs, who organises every day as though it were his last, neither longs for, nor fears the next day.

“So, however short, life is fully sufficient, and herefore whenever his last day comes, the wise man will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step.”

No. 2 of 24 books I intend to read and review in 2026.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly newsletter  highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.