It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been granted 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 spent on no good purpose, when at last we learn that it has slipped away, then we feel the bitterest regret: for it is only when it is beyond recall that we are startled into the knowledge of what has passed. And so there is nothing the crowd takes more lightly than time — yet about nothing else are men more avaricious. They guard their money with anxious care, but they allow the one thing that cannot be replaced to slip through their fingers, counting every coin and losing every hour. Some men are busy in doing nothing; others, more wretched still, spend their lives arranging the lives of others. Do not concern yourself, Paulinus, with how others may judge you, but with how you judge yourself. There are some who, though already old, sit in a corner learning what they might have practised long ago, and who are busy at idleness itself. Others give their days to pursuits far more painful precisely because they are useless. You will find that you have very little to wish for, and still less to obtain. Think it not strange that no one is content: it is because no one counts his own hours as his own. Your days have belonged to others; they have never belonged to you. Men defend their patrimony with the utmost vigilance, yet they squander time — the most precious of all possessions — without a thought, and let others despoil them of it daily. But the remedy is at hand: if you wish, you can retrieve it. Learn to hold fast to the day that is passing. Life is long, if you know how to use it. Your memory, well employed, will let you live twice over. Do not tell me that you have been busy: you have been busy, but not for yourself; others have had your days, and you have kept none of your own. I do not condemn every kind of occupation, but only those that swallow us up in what is not ours. Some things are worth doing; many more are merely exhausting. Know that the man who is too busy to live is the least free of all. Promise me not a long life, but a full one. I do not ask that you should count the years, but that you should live so that each year may suffice you. Look not at what lies behind, but at what remains. Guard the time that is left as a treasure that can never be recovered. It is not that we have been given a brief life, but that we have made it brief; we are not ill-supplied, but wasteful. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however modest grows through use if a careful guardian is set over it, so our life extends amply to him who arranges it well. Let then all hindrance be swept away, and let us fix our eyes on ourselves. Let us see how rich we are, how sufficient to ourselves are our own goods. Ask the gods, Paulinus, for whatever you desire; but for a life in which nothing is lacking you need ask no one. A whole life you can bestow upon yourself.