I am beginning to be sorry that I ever undertook to write this book. Not that it bores me; I have nothing else to do; indeed, it is a welcome distraction from eternity. But the book is tedious, it smells of the tomb, it has a rigor mortis about it; a serious fault, and yet a relatively small one, for the great defect of this book is you, reader. You want to live fast, to get to the end, and the book ambles along slowly; you like straight, solid narrative and a smooth style, but this book and my style are like a pair of drunks; they stagger to the right and to the left, they start and they stop, they mutter, they roar, they guffaw, they threaten the sky, they slip and fall.. And fall! Unhappy leaves of my cypress tree, you had to fall, like everything else that is lovely and beautiful; if I had eyes, I would shed a tear of remembrance for you. And this is the great advantage in being dead, that if you have no mouth with which to laugh, neither have you eyes with which to cry.Machado De Assis
About This Quote
Robert Burton, a 17th-century English philosopher and clergyman, believed that one of the greatest pleasures life had to offer was the opportunity for suicide. He believed that while we all have a duty to live, we also have a right to die. He wrote, "I am beginning to be sorry that I ever undertook to write this book." Burton's work is filled with references to death and decay and decay of beauty. In his work "The Anatomy of Melancholy," he states that "beauty is no more than a flower in time." In other words, beauty is fleeting and doesn't last forever.
He goes on to say that "a flower in time is a flower in a glass of water." Because of this, he believes that life itself is fleeting and must be enjoyed while it lasts. People tend to have an intense desire for beauty because of their intense need for beauty. Because of this, they chase beauty even though they know full well that it will never last forever.
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