Whoever it was who said that to philosophize is an exercise in dying was right in more ways than one, for by writing a book, nobody gets younger.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.
The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.
An aging writer has the not insignificant satisfaction of a shelf of books behind him that, as they wait for their ideal readers to discover them, will outlast him for a while.
It's what all writers dream of, that our work finds a measure of immortality that long outlives the words of any critic.
A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.
Death is really a great blessing for humanity, without it there could be no real progress. People who lived for ever would not only hamper and discourage the young, but they would themselves lack sufficient stimulus to be creative.
The end of reading is not more books but more life.
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
The ordinariness of living to be old is too novel a thing to appreciate.