Sunday 17 June 2012

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)



"LIVING in a country village, where a burial was a rarity, I never thought of death, it was so seldom presented unto me. Coming to London, where there is plenty of funerals, (so that coffins crowd one another, and corpses in the grave justle for elbow-room,) I slight and neglect death, because grown an object so constant and common.

How foul is my stomach to turn all food into bad humours? Funerals neither few nor frequent, work effectually upon me. London is a library of mortality. Volumes of all sorts and sizes, rich, poor, infants, children, youth, men, old men, daily die; I see there is more required to make a good scholar, than only the having of many books: Lord, be thou my schoolmaster, and teach me to number my days, that I may apply my heart unto wisdom".

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