April 24

“It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man’s death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too – as if it were comparatively a light thing to fail in love and reverence to the brother who has to climb the whole toilsome steep with us, and all our tears and tenderness were due to the one who is spared that hard journey.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

“He who has once stood beside the grave to look back on the companionship which has been for ever closed, feeling how impotent then are the wild love and the keen sorrow to give one instant’s pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart, which can only be discharged to the dust.”

RUSKIN

“When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]