#urgency

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself, and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason?

You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now, and keep putting things off, you will remain without improving, living and dying as an ordinary person.

The transitoriness of our existence in no way makes it meaningless. But it does make up our responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transient possibilities.

Do not fear the passage of time; fear only the squandering of the opportunities it offers.

Death gives life its true seriousness and urgency. If we were immortal, we could postpone every decision forever.

Don't count the days, make the days count.

I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.

What is found now is found then. If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with an apartment in the city of death.

Night passed in sleeping, day passed in eating; this priceless diamond of human birth was traded for a handful of cowrie shells.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.

Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have given you dates of grace, and you have not used them.

Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will set, and you with it.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

There is nothing more disgraceful than an old man who has no evidence of his life except his age.

You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep.