On the Shortness of Life (Penguin Great Ideas)

I imagine many people could have achieved wisdom if they had not imagined they had already achieved it, if they had not dissembled about some of their own characteristics and turned a blind eye to others.

I have a tremendous love of frugality, I must admit. I don’t like a couch decked out ostentatiously; or clothes brought out from a chest or given a sheen by the forceful pressure of weights and a thousand mangles, but homely and inexpensive, and not hoarded to be donned with fuss and bother. I like food which is not prepared and watched over by the

we can choose whose children we would like to be.

dissembled about some of their own characteristics

very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.

‘Life is short, art is long.

Life will be driven on through a succession of preoccupations: we shall always long for leisure, but never enjoy it.

I am told that one of these self-indulgent people – if self-indulgence is the right word for unlearning the ordinary habits of human life – when he had been carried out from the bath and put in his sedan chair, asked, ‘Am I now sitting down?’ Do you think that this man, who doesn’t know if he is sitting down, knows whether he is alive, whether he s