One way I quench my desire for learning and discovering is through reading. I try to make reading a daily activity, and to diversify the books I read as much as possible, from essays , technical readings to novels and self-help books.

Find my profile on Good Reads here : https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/36438069-mounaim-zaryouhi 

On the Shortness of Life
(LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA)

Through this beautiful essay, Seneca urges his readers to profit from their lives as much as possible, to not squander their time in this life in empty preoccupations. Following are some quotes from the essay : 

 "Look back and recall when you were ever sure of your purpose; how few days turned out as you'd intended; when you were ever at your own disposal; when your face showed its own expression; when your mind was free from disturbance; what accomplishment you can claim in such a long life; how many have plundered your existence without your being aware of what you were losing; how much time has been lost to groundless anguish, foolish pleasure, greedy desire, the charms of society; how little is left to you from your own store of time. You'll come to realize that you're dying before your time."

 "You're like ordinary mortals in fearing everything, you're like immortals in coveting everything"

 "How late it is to begin living just when life must come to an end! What foolish obliviousness to our mortality to put off wise plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to want to begin life from a point that few have reached!"

"In reality, your life, even if you live a thousand years and more, will be compressed into the merest span of time; those vices of yours will swallow up any number of lifetimes. "

"Nothing is less characteristic of a man preoccupied than living: there is no knowledge that is harder to acquire. Instructors of other disciplines are two a penny; indeed, mere boys have been seen to master sorne of these disciplines so thoroughly that they could even be masters in the classroom. But learning how to live takes a whole lifetime, and-you'll perhaps be more surprised at this-it takes a whole lifetime to learn how to die."

"Believe me, it's the mark of a great man, and one rising above human weakness, to allow no part of his time to be skimmed off. "

"But the person who devotes every second of his time to his own needs and who organizes each day as if it were a complete life neither longs for nor is afraid of the next day. For what new kind of pleasure is there that any hour can now bring? Everything has been experienced, everything enjoyed to the full. For the rest, fortune may make arrangements as it wishes; his life has already reached safety."

"But if each of us could see the number of years before us as precisely as the years that have passed, how alarmed would be those who saw only a few years left, and how carefully would they use them! And yet it's easy to manage an amount, however small, which is clearly defined; we have to be more careful in conserving an amount that may give out at any time. "

 "They form their purposes with the distant future in mind. Yet the greatest waste oflife lies in postponement: it robs us of each day in turn, and snatches away the present by promising the future. The greatest impediment to living is expectancy, which relies on tomorrow and wastes today. You map out what is in fortune's hand but let slip what's in your own hand. What are you aiming at? What's your goal? All that's to come lies in uncertainty: live right now. (z) Hear the cry of the greatest of poets, who sings his salutary song as if inspired with divine utterance: 

Each finest day of life for wretched mortals 

is ever the first to flee."

 "Just as conversation or reading or some deep reflection beguiles travelers and they find that they've reached their destination before being aware of approaching it, so with this ceaseless and extremely rapid journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether awake or sleeping: the preoccupied become aware of it only at its end. "

" and just as it does no good to pour any amount ofliquid into a vessel if there's nothing at the bottom to receive and keep it/5 so it makes no difference how much time we are given if there's nowhere for it to settle, and it's allowed to pass through the cracks and holes in the mind. "

"For even if you grant that people say all these things in good faith, and even if they guarantee the truthfulness of their writing, whose mistakes will such items of information make fewer? Whose passions will they hold in check? Whom will they make braver, or more just, or more generous of spirit? My friend Fabianus used to say that he sometimes wondered whether it was better to apply oneself to no researches at all than to be embroiled in these. "

 "We are led by the work of others into the presence of the most beautiful treasures, which have been pulled from darkness and brought to light. From no age are we debarred, we have access to all; and if we want to transcend the narrow limitations of human weakness by our expansiveness of mind, there is a great span of time for us to range over. "

"Since nature allows us shared possession of any age, why not turn from this short and fleeting passage of time and give ourselves over completely to the past, which is measureless and eternal and shared with our betters? "

"None of them will diminish your years, but each will share his own years with you. With none of them will conversation be dangerous, friendship life threatening, or cultivation of them expensive. From them you'll take whatever you wish; it will be no fault of theirs if you fail to take in the very fullest amount you have room for. (2) What happiness, what a fine old age lies in store for the person who's put himself under the patronage of these people! He'll have friends whose advice he can seek on the greatest or least important matters, whom he can consult daily about himself, from whom he can hear the truth without insult and receive praise without fawning, and who will provide a model after which to fashion himself. "

 "There is a common saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents we were allotted, and that they were given to us by chance; 'yet we can be born to whomever we wish. There are households of the most distinguished intellects: choose the one into which you'd like to be adopted, and you'll inherit not just the name but also the actual property, which is not to be hoarded in a miserly or mean spirit: the more people you share it with, the greater it will become."

"But for those who forget the past, disregard the present, and fear for the future, life is very brief and very troubled. When they reach the end of it, they realize too late, poor wretches, that they've been busied for so long in doing nothing. "

 "And what of the fact that even the joys of such people are anxiety ridden? This is because they don't rest on stable causes but are disrupted as frivolously as they are produced."

" All the greatest blessings cause anxiety, and fortune is never less wisely trusted than when at its most advantageous. To maintain prosperity we need fresh prosperl.ty, and other prayers are to be offered instead of those that have already turned out well. Everything that comes our way by chance is unsteady, and the hi'gher our fortunes rise, the more susceptible they are to falling. But what must inevitably collapse gives no one pleasure; and so the life of those who acquire through hard work what they must work harder to possess is necessarily very wretched, and not just very brief."

 "The greater part of your life, and certainly the better part, has been given to the state: take some of your time for yourself as well."

"Now, while enthusiasm is still fresh, those with an active interest should progress to better things. In this mode of life much that is worth studying awaits you: the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, knowledge of how to live and to die, and deep repose."

"The plight of all preoccupied people is wretched, but most wretched is the plight of those who labor under preoccupations that are not even their own, whose sleep schedule is regulated by somebody else's, who walk at somebody else's pace, and who are under instructions in that freest of all activities-loving and hating.47 If these people want to know how short their life is, let them reflect on how small a part of it is their very own. "