He only half dies who leaves an image of himself in his sons.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In the modern world, it may be that a living father can only be half a father to a boy - the dead father is the other vital half: the half that grows the boy up once and for all.
But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.
A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.
I didn't even realize this at first, but there's almost no central character in any of my 24 books who doesn't have a dead mother or a lost parent.
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.
He wants to live on through something-and in his case, his masterpiece is his son. all of us want that, and it gets more poignant as we get more anonymous in this world.
All that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.
A filial son to his father can be a traitorous subject to his ruler.
It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.
In every parting there is an image of death.