" Most human beings, (...) complain about the meanness of nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, and because this spell of time that has been given to us rushes by so swiftly and rapidly that with very few exceptions life ceases for the rest of us just when we are getting ready for it.
(...) It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury
and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realise that it has passed away before we knew it was passing (...)
(...) It is a small part of life we really live, all the rest is not life, but merelly time."

Seneca (4 BC-AD 65), On the shortness of life