Don’t waste time on unimportant matters or negative feelings. Dating from the mid-1800s, this phrase may allude to the Latin proverb, Ars longa, vita brevis (art is lasting, life is short). It is generally used to dismiss unimportant concerns, as well as to encourage some activity. For example, “Go ahead and use your vacation days—life’s too short to put them off.” Or, as novelist William G. Tapply put it in Gray Ghost (2007), “Life was too damn short and uncertain to keep doing things that didn’t feel right and that you didn’t believe in.”