Once it is gone, it is lost forever. So seize the day, before life seizes it away from you. It's time to to live mindfully and consciously.
Do things you love, enjoy the wonders of the world and live your life to the fullest.
As philosopher Seneca said life is not short. It is sufficiently long enough to allow us to accomplish of the very greatest things if it is well invested.
But instead we squander in luxury and carelessness; devoted to no good end. Then by the time we realized, time has passed away.
He also said that by putting things off is the biggest waste of life. It snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future.
The biggest hindrance to living is expectancy. It hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. What we should do is to live immediately.
We spend our lives forgetting the present moment, constantly occupying ourselves with planning the future and worrying with anxiety over its impermanence.
In Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's book "Either/Or: A Fragment of Life", he wrote about that one of our source unhappiness is fleeing away from our own lives.
"The unhappy person is one who has his ideal, the content of his life, the fullness of his consciousness, the essence of his being, in some manner outside of himself. The unhappy man is always absent from himself, never present to himself. But one can be absent, obviously, either in the past or in the future. This adequately circumscribes the entire territory of the unhappy consciousness." - Soren Kierkegaard (The Unhappiest Man)
Here is a good selection of quotes about how short life can be to remind us to stop wasting our limited time. At any time, it could be your last time on earth.
Make use of your day wisely and mindfully, because one day you will have no more day left, mind you.
“Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.” - Phillips Brooks
"Life is short. Make it simple and sweet." - Best Life Quotes
“Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.” - Stephen Vincent Benét
“Live every day as if it were going to be your last; for one day you’re sure to be right.” - Harry Morant
“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.” - Charles Richards
“As you grow older, you’ll find the only things you regret are the things you didn’t do.” - Zachary Scott
“Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying.” - Christian Gellert
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake.” - Marie Ray
“Expect an early death – it will keep you busier.” - Martin H. Fischer
“If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.” - Larry McMurtry
“Life is too short to work so hard.” - Vivien Leigh
"Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive." - Elbert Hubbard
“Life is too short to worry about anything. You had better enjoy it because the next day promises nothing.” - Eric Davis
“Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.” - Benjamin Disraeli
"Every man dies. Not every man really lives." - (From the movie Braveheart)
“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.” - John Burroughs
“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?” - Friedrich Nietzsche
“Life is a flash of lightning in the dark of night. It is a brief time of tremendous potential.” - B. Alan Wallace
"Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think." - Chinese Proverb
“Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of your life.” - Michael Leboeuf
“We cannot waste time. We can only waste ourselves.” - George M. Adams
"I don’t want to earn my living; I want to live." - Oscar Wilde
"Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you." - Annie Dillard
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways." - Stephen Vincent Benét
"The important thing is not how many years in your life but how much life in your years." - Edward J. Stieglitz
"Don't be stopped by obstacles in life. Keep going, they are just part of life." - Best Life Quotes
"Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead." - Scottish Proverb
"There are many ways to waste your time. But there is no way to get it back." -Best Life Quotes
"A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time." - Francis Bacon
"Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live." - Margaret Fuller
"Have a good time. Time spent being unhappy is life wasted for good." - Best Life Quotes
"You may delay, but time will not." - Benjamin Franklin
“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.” - Steve Jobs
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." - Annie Dillard
"I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours." - Bernard Berenson
"Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live." - Nicolas de Chamfort
"We are dying each moment. So live each passing moment mindfully." - Best Life Quotes
"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older." - Larry McMurtry (Some Can Whistle)
"Minutes are worth more than money. Spend them wisely." - Thomas P. Murphy
"When your life flashes before your eyes, make sure it's a spectacle you wanted to see." - Best Life Quotes
"Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got." - Art Buchwald
"It is not how long you can live. It's how much you can live out of it." - Best Life Quotes
"Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them." - Dion Boucicault
"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time." - Mark Twain
"Remember you must die whether you sit about moping all day long or whether on feast days you stretch out in a green field, happy with a bottle of Falernian from your innermost cellar." - Horace
"Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain." - William Hazlitt (On the Love of Life)
"Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness." - Jean de La Bruyère
"Fields can lie fallow, but we can't; we have less time." - Mignon McLaughlin (The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966)
"May you live all the days of your life." - Jonathan Swift
"Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying." - Christian Furchtegott Gellert
"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them." - Jack London
"Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Lost time is never found again." - Benjamin Franklin
"I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." - William Shakespeare
"Every second is of infinite value." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"We are always getting ready to live but never living." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The future has a way of arriving unannounced." - George F. Will
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." - Hector Berlioz
"Waste your money and you're only out of money, but waste your time and you've lost a part of your life." - Michael Leboeuf
"You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now." - Joan Baez
"Life, if well lived, is long enough." - Seneca
"There are but three events in a man's life: birth, life, and death. He is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live." - Jean de la Bruyère
"So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the path of each man's genius contracts itself to a very few hours." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of." - Bruce Lee
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