About this passageAddressed to Paulinus, who managed Rome's grain supply. Seneca opens by reporting the common complaint — that nature gave us too little time — and then refuses it. The list that follows is of ways people spend a life without noticing, and it is worth saying that Seneca was among the wealthiest men in Rome and held office under Nero; readers have argued since antiquity about how the argument sits with the life.
The greater part of mankind, my Paulinus, complains of the unkindness of Nature, because we are born only for a short space of time, and that this allotted period of life runs away so swiftly, nay so hurriedly, that with but few exceptions men's life comes to an end just as they are preparing to enjoy it: nor is it only the common herd and the ignorant vulgar who mourn over this universal misfortune, as they consider it to be: this reflection has wrung complaints even from great men. Hence comes that well-known saying of physicians, that art is long but life is short.
Why do we complain of Nature? she has dealt kindly with us. Life is long enough, if you know how to use it. One man is possessed by an avarice which nothing can satisfy, another by a laborious diligence in doing what is totally useless: another is sodden by wine: another is benumbed by sloth: one man is exhausted by an ambition which makes him court the good will of others.
In plainer words
Most people complain that nature was stingy: we get so little time, and it goes so fast that most of us are only just ready to enjoy life when it ends. Even great men have said so — hence the doctors' line that art is long and life is short. But why blame nature? She was generous. Life is long enough, if you know how to spend it. The trouble is what we spend it on. Greed that is never satisfied. Enormous effort poured into something pointless. Drink. Idleness. Ambition that leaves you courting other people's approval.
A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.