May My Last Breath Be

The Only True Time Which A Man Can Properly Call His Own, Is That Which He Has All To Himself; The Rest, Though In Some Sense He May Be Said To Live It, Is Other People's Time, Not His.

How Sickness Enlarges The Dimension Of A Man’s Self To Himself!

The Going Away Of Friends Does Not Make The Remainder More Precious. It Takes So Much From Them As There Was A Common Link. A. B. And C. Make A Party. A. Dies. B. Not Only Loses A. But All A.'s Part In C. C. Loses A.'s Part In B., And So The Alphabet Sickens By Subtraction Of Interchangeables.

I Grow Ominously Tired Of Official Confinement. Thirty Years Have I Served The Philistines, And My Neck Is Not Subdued To The Yoke. You Don't Know How Wearisome It Is To Breathe The Air Of Four Pent Walls Without Relief Day After Day, All The Golden Hours Of The Day Between Ten And Four Without Ease Or Interposition ... These Pestilential Clerk-faces Always In One's Dish. O For A Few Years Between The Grave And The Desk!

I Have Sat Through An Italian Opera, Til, For Sheer Pain, And Inexplicable Anguish, I Have Rushed Out Into The Noisiest Places Of The Crowded Street, To Solace Myself With Sounds Which I Was Not Obliged To Follow And Get Rid Of The Distracting Torment Of Endless, Fruitless, Barren Attention!