kyleschen

Then out spake brave Horatius,
the Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods

You’re born alone, and you die alone. The world just puts a ton of stuff on top of that to help you forget that fact. I don’t. I live like there’s no tomorrow because well, there isn’t one…

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

It will cause no commotion to remind you of it’s swiftness, but glide on quietly… What will be the outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that.

Everybody should do in their lifetime, sometime, two things. One is to consider death. To observe skulls and skeletons and to wonder what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up— never. That is a most gloomy thing for contemplation. It’s like manure. Just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on, so the contemplation of death and the acceptance of death is very highly generative of creating life. You’ll get wonderful things out of that.

I believe, in truth, that it is those terrible ceremonies and preparations wherewith we set it out, that more terrify us than the thing itself; a new, quite contrary way of living; the cries of mothers, wives, and children; the visits of astounded and afflicted friends; the attendance of pale and blubbering servants; a dark room, set round with burning tapers; our beds environed with physicians and divines; in sum, nothing but ghostliness and horror round about us; we seem dead and buried already. … Happy is the death that deprives us of leisure for preparing such ceremonials.

To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.

Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.