Every funeral may justly be considered as a summons to prepare for that state into which it shows us that we must some time enter; and the summons is more loud and piercing as the event of which it warns us is at less distance. To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; but to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of preparing for death throughout life, particularly as we age.
Lyndon B. Johnson's quote reflects on the inevitability of death and the urgent call to prepare for it, especially as we grow older. He likens the act of neglecting this preparation to being derelict in duty during a critical moment, indicating that just as soldiers must remain vigilant, we too must confront our mortality and live with purpose and awareness of our finite existence. The quote serves as a reminder to make the most of our lives and to prepare ourselves spiritually and emotionally for the eventuality of death.
In practice
During a eulogy, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of living meaningfully.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam-and all who seek to share their conquest-of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.
So far are we generally from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations as nothing but along train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us which are only excusable in the prime of life.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.
Certain things need to be said if one is to avoid falsifying the problem.
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
Freedom of speech...Freedom of worship...Freedom from want...Freedom from fear.
It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it.
We have a love affair with the idea of the 'natural,' even though we, as a species, are about as unnatural as you can imagine.
. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?" “Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.
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