“Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny must the soul be blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! This too was a breath of God: bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded. That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.” (Carlyle.)
Unpreparedness for death:
“One should think,” said a friend to the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson, “that sickness and the view of death would make men more religious.” “Sir,” replied Johnson, “they do not know how to go to work about it. A man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick than a man who has never learned figures can count when he has need of calculation.”
