“Would words shatter the immensity of life and death so close to one another?”

“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.”

“I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. If I were to imagine heaven, I would imagine a door opening. And he would be waiting for me there.”

“The power of getting to know one another is so immense, eclipsed only by first getting to know ourselves.”

“a near View of Death would soon reconcile Men of good Priciples one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy Scituation in Life, and our putting these Things far from us, that our Breaches are formented, ill Blood continued, Prejudices, Breach of Charity and of Christian Union so much kept and so far carry'd on among us, as it is: Another Plague Year would reconcile all these Differences, a close conversing with Death, or the Diseases that threaten Death, would scum off the Gall from our Tempers, remove the Animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing Eyes, than those which we look'd on Things with before”

“Life and death were so unpredictable. So close to each other. We existed moment to moment, never knowing who would be the next to leave this world.”