The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The approach of death certainly concentrates the mind.
Death makes us sad, but it can also make us feel more alive.
Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind's disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
Our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away.
The final causes, then, of compassion are to prevent and to relieve misery.
The cure for sorrow is to learn something.
Grief causes suffering and disease.
Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.