Wednesday, September 22, 2010

A salutary and consoling discipline

Artist: Vittore Carpaccio (1455-1526)

If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. No other practice so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.

-- Muriel Spark

2 comments:

  1. This is so good.I'm really going to think about this.

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  2. Hello, Jan.

    You know, when I was in the convent, we were taught to go to bed completely prepared to die and that waking up in the morning was resurrection. It is a wonderful way to live. I've cherished it ever since.

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