Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinRead
Death is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Death uncovers the true essence of a person, revealing their inner character and values.
This quote suggests that the inevitability of death brings forth the most genuine aspects of a person's character. In the face of mortality, superficial qualities fade away, and what truly defines a person—their virtues, values, and inner spirit—becomes evident. It implies that the awareness of death can lead individuals to confront their inner selves and reflect on their true nature.
Themes
DeathSoulCharacterTruthMortality
In practice
Example use cases
During a eulogy, this quote can be used to reflect on the deceased's inner qualities.
More from Edwin Hubbel Chapin
All quotes →Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?
Edwin Hubbel ChapinRead
Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him; if he is a walking university.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinRead
Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinRead
Tomorrow may never come to us. We do not live in tomorrow. We cannot find it in any of our title-deeds. The man who owns whole blocks of real estate, and great ships on the sea, does not own a single minute of tomorrow. Tomorrow! It is a mysterious possibility, not yet born. It lies under the seal of midnight-behind the veil of glittering constellations.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinRead
A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinRead
Similar quotes
We musn't forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don't want to think about. We musn't forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you're twenty and the next day you're eighty.
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i discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.
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A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.
Timothy KellerRead
The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.
Nathaniel HawthorneRead
There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.
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Who is there that can adequately gauge the greatness of the humility, gentleness, self-surrender, revealed by the Lord of majesty in assuming human nature, in accepting the punishment of death, the shame of the cross?
Saint BernardRead