There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks.

If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but a prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition; we live with death, and die not in a moment.

Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.

Let the fruition of things bless the possession of them, and take no satisfaction in dying but living rich.