Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so shall I choose my death when I am about to depart from life.
Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.
Death either destroys or unhusks us. If it means liberation, better things await us when our burden s gone: if destruction, nothing at all awaits us; blessings and curses are abolished.
He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former.
