Most of mankind, Paulinus, complains about nature's meanness: we are born for a brief span, and the time given to us runs so quickly that, with few exceptions, life leaves us just as we are getting ready to live.
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and generously given for the greatest achievements, if the whole of it is well invested.
But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is spent on nothing good, then at last, pressed by the final necessity, we realize that the life we never noticed has gone.
So it is: we are not given a short life, we make it short; we are not poor in time, we are wasteful of it.
конец