On Last Lessons

“I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man.”

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house.”

“If my soul is to perish with my body, nevertheless do you, from awe of the gods who guard and govern this fair universe, preserve my memory by the loyalty and piety of your lives.”

“Consider in what condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death, and consider the shortness of life.”

“Kinsmen, friends and lovers salute a man who has been long away and returns safe from afar. In like manner his good works receive him who has done good and has gone from this world to the other.”

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Butler argued that looking back over a life is not idle nostalgia but necessary work, a naturally occurring review set in motion by knowing that time is short.

More than 1,500 of the oldest Americans were asked one question: looking back, what are the most important lessons you would want to pass on to younger people?

“Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.”