Seneca
“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, Letter I — tr. Gummere, 1917 Loeb
Dum differtur vita transcurrit.
Documented source
Attribution
Seneca
Source
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, Letter I — tr. Gummere, 1917 Loeb
Dum differtur vita transcurrit.
In full
“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
Status
Public domain in the United States
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About this line
Seneca opened his very first letter to Lucilius with this — not as an introduction, as an alarm. He’d watched people defer what mattered in favor of what was merely urgent. Time spent waiting was time spent, and it didn’t come back.
Why we carry this line
Not a productivity slogan — an alarm. Living mostly in the waiting room. Literally waiting. I’ve felt that. I don’t want anyone to miss the thing while they’re busy chasing or postponing it.
The design
Set in Roman capitals, the way Latin was cut into stone. The small dots are interpuncts, the marks Roman stonecutters carved between words.
Objects carrying this line
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