What Is Your Epitaph?

The other day I was asked to write an epitaph for a relative, just one sentence summing up a human life. I couldn’t imagine him without his books so I came up with three alternatives: “An indomitable reader, he has found a quieter library”; “He loved books more than people”; and “He died to save the library fines”. […]

What’s Your Legacy?

In John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem  A Legacy it’s clear that he wants to be remembered for his friendship, although, together with his mentor, William Lloyd Garrison, he spent a large part of his life fighting against slavery and is remembered today more for his poetry than for anything else. If, as Lucretius said more than […]