The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.