Abridge your hopes in proportion to the shortness of the span of human life; for while we converse, the hours, as if envious of our pleasure, fly away: enjoy, therefore, the present time, and trust not too much to what to-morrow may produce.
If anything affects your eye, you hasten to have it removed; if anything affects your mind, you postpone the cure for a year.
[Lat., Quae laedunt oculum festinas demere; si quid
Est animum, differs curandi tempus in annum.]
It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement.