The greatest waste of life is postponement: this follows most clearly from the fact that everyone, on reflection, will perceive it. No one is granted so long a delay as his undertakings would require; but each person, for himself, finds enough, if he knows how to use it. Life is not short; it is we who make nothing long of it. Thus we do not lack time; we squander much of it. Life is long enough for the things we must accomplish in it, and if it is wholly given over to business, it does not suffice even for those. But when we devote ourselves to a great use of time, when we know how to enjoy it, life proves long, and there remains ample room for what must be done in it. Why then do we deceive ourselves so gravely? Because we do not look death closely in the face, but turn toward it from afar. And yet it stands near us on every side! The evil common to all is that life seems long to them, while they enjoy none of it and possess no assurance of it. But consider: whose death, among them, is so distant? You do not know what death is, nor for whom it waits, and yet you believe it concerns only others. You know well that it strikes each of us down; but you imagine it will not strike everyone. You who never fall silent about how limited your time is, why do you multiply your occupations? Why, as if you were immortal, do you busy yourself with things you cannot finish? Do you keep putting joy off to a later day? All the obstacles of life, all its accidents, its uncertainties, hope and fear, leave us no time at all; and the greatest waste of life is postponement. The day you learn that tomorrow is uncertain, you will live that day. But do not think one must shun only the idleness of those who are unfruitfully at leisure; for among them are those who spend their time on spectacles, on games of chance, on banquets. It is not the kind of occupation that makes men unhappy, but the illusion of the crowd: leisure absorbed in things that do not befit us wastes our time, and those who devote themselves to mere pleasures accomplish nothing worthier. Even in your troubles, what you will teach me is that whatever is misshapen is not always grievous to him who made it, and that difficulties are often occasions for action. Then one must consider the most burdened of men, those tormented by painful and barren anxieties, those who pass their lives in the turmoil of a thousand undertakings, none of which leaves them leisure to turn back to themselves. These, I say, are not living: they are preparing to live. The greatest disaster of human life is that it is never arrested, that no one perceives the flight of time; the man most greedy for gain and most careless of other goods still knows how to apply himself to not losing time: some are assiduous in these pursuits, others delight in the variety of occupations. But there are men who spend their lives preparing to live, and who postpone life itself. It is a common error of all men to prepare to live; yet there is a difference: these await a longer life, those desire a better life; and their conduct does not differ. To defer, to put off, always to reserve something for the future: that is not to live, but to hope. And the greatest evil of all is that before we even know life, we have already let it pass: some begin to live when they ought to stop, and others have never begun when they could. Look at those men whose affairs are immense, who extend their operations everywhere: they are crushed by their own wealth, and prosperity itself oppresses them more than adversity would have done. For human nature wills that a man rest after his labor; but these men know no limit to their enterprises. Those who pass their lives in pleasure hide their idleness beneath an appearance of occupation, filling their days not with honorable work but with vain anxieties. And those tormented by the cares of politics, by public office, by honors, are not living: they are waiting to live. Some are lost to love, others to ambition, these to avarice, those to curiosity; and not one among them knows that he is granted only the present, and that all the rest is hope. Withdraw, then, into those modest havens you judge good, and remember that life is long enough, if you know how to use it: learn first to desire nothing excessive, to look within yourself, and to know that the highest things do not demand much time. But the life we would lead if we were its masters is not given to us; those who enjoy time best are those who do what they will. Acknowledge, then, at last, that life is not short, but that we make it so; and that we do not lack it, but squander it.