The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living.
There is not any advantage to be won from grim lamentation.
Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection.
Lamentation is the only musician that always, like a screech-owl, alights and sits on the roof of any angry man.
Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them [worlds], we have not yet conquered one?
Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.
Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me. [Lat. , Nemo me lacrymis decoret, nec funera fletu. Faxit cur? Volito vivu' per ora virum. ]
Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter -- to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.
