A reader who wants to follow any quotation back to its source can do so here. Every citation in the book is listed below in order of appearance, grouped by chapter. Where a chapter or letter number is cited inside the text itself, that detail is preserved here. Inline blockquotes from chapter 18 are sourced below the BookQuote entries. The Wide Reads library carries the full text of each classical source cited.
FRONT MATTER (landing page epigraph)
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
"Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time."
CHAPTER ONE — The Last Chapter First
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think."
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
"Above him there was nothing but the sky—the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds gliding slowly across it... 'How quiet, peaceful, and solemn... How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky.'"
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, Ch. 1
"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 if it were all well invested."
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 2 ('Where I Lived, and What I Lived For')
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
CHAPTER TWO — The Closed Book
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, Ch. 3
"You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both."
— Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
"Spirit! hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse... I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future."
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
"You are living as if destined to live forever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don't notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply."
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter 101
"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."
CHAPTER THREE — The Liberating Terror
— Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Canto XXXIV)
"And thence we came forth to see again the stars."
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
"Let death be daily before your eyes, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything."
— The Bhagavad Gita, 2.19–20
"For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time... The soul is not slain when the body is slain."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book II
"There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself, it will be gone and will never return."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly."
CHAPTER FOUR — "There's Always Tomorrow"
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
"No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay; yet we easily let others encroach on our lives."
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
"How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live. What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!"
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
"Until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: Wait and Hope."
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
"The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours."
CHAPTER FIVE — "I'll Start When I'm Ready"
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter 13
"We suffer more in imagination than in reality."
— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness... Too much sanity may be madness, and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
"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."
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III Scene 1 (Hamlet's soliloquy)
"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book X.16
"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."
CHAPTER SIX — "They Already Know"
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
"It's not that we have little time, but more that we waste much of it. Life is long if you know how to use it."
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think."
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter 101
"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."
CHAPTER SEVEN — "I Can Always Go Back"
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight."
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
"I am not the same man I was. Fourteen years of prison have changed me... The Edmond Dantès who entered the Château d'If is dead. He died in the dungeon."
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
"He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, and do so with all your heart."
CHAPTER EIGHT — The Deathbed Edit
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter 2
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he himself is doing."
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 2
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
— Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VII
"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking."
CHAPTER NINE — The Five Regrets
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter 23
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
"You are living as if destined to live forever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don't notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply."
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth)
"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book V
"The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts."
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter 13
"We suffer more in imagination than in reality."
CHAPTER TEN — The Unlived Life
— Jane Austen, Persuasion
"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning."
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
"I had been too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, Ch. 3
"You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire."
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
"How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN — The Morning Practice
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book II.1
"Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness, all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil."
CHAPTER TWELVE — The Evening Review
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
"No one is to be found who is willing to distribute their money; yet among how many do each of us distribute our life! We are tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN — The Memento Mori Objects
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V Scene 1 (Hamlet of Yorick)
"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy... Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?"
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
"Keep death and exile before your eyes each day, along with everything that seems terrible. By doing so, you'll never have a base thought nor will you have excessive desire."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN — Urgency Without Anxiety
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
"The wise man is neither raised up by prosperity nor cast down by adversity; for always he has striven to rely predominantly on himself, and to derive all joy from himself."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN — This Day
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Confine yourself to the present... Ask yourself: What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance? You will be embarrassed to answer."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN — The Difficult Conversations
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Jane to Mr. Brocklehurst)
"Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN — What You Leave
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book X.16
"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
"Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one: men learn as they teach."
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (Sydney Carton, final chapter)
"I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss... I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy... I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN — The Chapter You Write for Others
— John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (popularly attributed)
"The lives of the dead are placed in the memory of the living."
— Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (the Bishop to Jean Valjean)
"You forgot that I gave you the candlesticks as well... Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."
— Samuel Johnson (Boswell, Life of Johnson, 19 September 1777)
"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
EPILOGUE — The First Chapter Now
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
"Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only they truly live. Not satisfied to merely keep watch over their own days, they annex every age to their own. All the harvest of the past is added to their store."
— Bernard of Chartres (John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1159)
"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."
— John Milton, Areopagitica
"A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
"How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?"
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book X.16
"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
"Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly."
THE END
THE LAST CHAPTER FIRST
by Arvin Lioanag
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