Aphorisms

Life is long enough if you use it

Conflicts

Seneca’s text reports the aphorism as “that well-known saying of physicians, that art is long but life is short”, the complaint he sets out to reject. It holds that life is short.

1. c. 49 CE

   “We do not have a very short time assigned to us, but we lose a great deal of it: life is long enough to carry out the most important projects”

   Seneca, On the Shortness of Life. Earliest we can find, about 450 years earlier.

2. c. 400 BCE

   “that well-known saying of physicians, that art is long but life is short”