"If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is the epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is."

KURT VONNEGUT, Deadeye Dick

Words that everyone once used are now obsolete, and so are the men whose names were once on everyone's lips: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and to a lesser degree Scipio and Cato, and yes, even Augustus, Hadrian, and Antoninus are less spoken of now than they were in their own days. For all things fade away, become the stuff of legend, and are soon buried in oblivion. Mind you, this is true only for those who blazed once like bright stars in the firmament, but for the rest, as soon as a few clods of earth cover their corpses, they are 'out of sight, out of mind.' In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself.

+ Meditations, Marcus Aurelius; IV. 33

"They will ask for your rifles! Retain two: Give one and keep the other. A single rifle will save a hundred souls!"

+St. Kosmas Aitolos

Be wary and keep watch tonight,
Make sure your weapon's at hand.
Here in the land where shines no light,
Death can strike you where you stand.