
“Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?”
Oxford in the Vacation.
Essays of Elia (1823)
“Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?”
"Reconsidering the Spiritual in Art" http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n1/gallery/kuspit_d/reconsidering_print.htm, Blackbird (2003).
“Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.”
“Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.”
Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face
Context: When you look straight on, you end by seeing the immense event — death. There is only one thing which really gives the meaning of our whole life, and that is our death. In that terrible light may they judge their hearts who will one day die. Well I know that Marie's death would be the same thing in my heart as my own, and it seems to me also that only within her of all the world does my own likeness wholly live. We are not afraid of the too great sincerity which goes the length of these things; and we talk about them, beside the bed which awaits the inevitable hour when we shall not awake in it again. We say: —
"There'll be a day when I shall begin something that I shan't finish — a walk, or a letter, or a sentence, or a dream.".
A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)