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When gone from hence, may nobody think of me again, except when one or two may think perhaps how I loved them

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

To lament the death of a friend is both natural and just; a sigh or a tear I would allow to his memory: but no profuse or obstinate sorrow.

A wise man gives way to tears in some cases, and cannot avoid them in others.

Death, like birth, is a mystery of nature; the one a compounding of elements, the other a resolution into the same.

The present moment is the same for all men, and their loss, therefore, is equal, for it is clear that what they lose in death is but a fleeting instant of time.

This ripeness is so delightful to me, that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem as it were to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Otherwise, my dear wife, we shall seem discontented at the birth of our little daughter, if we consider our position before her birth as more perfect.

Even grief, that passion to which the virtuous and tender mind is particularly subject, will be obviated or alleviated by the same thoughts.

No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul.

There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern--why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?