When dead no man finds respect or glory from men
of his town. Rather, we hope while alive for some
favor from the living. The dead are always scorned.

Being cared for when one is dead is less satisfactory than being cared for when one is alive.

There is a tendency to class such men with toreadors and gamblers. People extol their contempt for death. But I would not give a fig for anybody’s contempt for death. If its roots are not sunk deep in an acceptance of responsibility, this contempt for death is the sign either of an impoverished soul or of youthful extravagance.

Time devours our feeble mortality, leaving us with but the sour residue of memory.

We shrink from the contemplation of our dead bodies, forgetting that when dead they are no longer ours, and concern us as little as the hairs that have fallen from our heads.

The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.

Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and to the world.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

I say; [136] for a man who dies from among his household is regretted, but a woman is of little account.

Our admiration is so given to dead martyrs that we have little time for living heroes.

Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful; the proud are made sour by the remembrance, and the vain silent.

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their neglect.