On the Shortness of Life

The majority of mortals Paulinus complain bitterly of the spitefulness of Nature because we are born for a brief span of life because even this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live. Nor is it merely the common herd and the unthinking crowd that bemoan what is as men deem it an universal ill; the same feeling has called forth complaint also from men who were famous.