Cicero declared that if the number of his days were doubled, he should still not have time to read the lyric poets … What am I to do? Death is on my trail, and life is fleeting away; teach me something with which to face these troubles. Bring it to pass that I shall cease trying to escape from death, and that life may cease to escape from me.
Give me courage to meet hardships; make me calm in the face of the unavoidable.
Relax the straitened limits of the time which is allotted me. Show me that the good in life does not depend upon life’s length, but upon the use we make of it; also, that it is possible, or rather usual, for a man who has lived long to have lived too little.
– Seneca