If I had my life to live over again, I would form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is not another practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life.

This deadly body of mine can dance, too.

Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

Being dead's a drug', he says, 'you'll get hooked on it.

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 -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.