The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone. – Harriet Beecher Stowe, Little Foxes, 1865

There was George, throwing away in hideous sloth the inestimable gift of time; his valuable life, every second of which he would have to account for hereafter, passing away from him, unused…. sprawling there, sunk in soul-clogging oblivion. – Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), 1889

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain. – William Hazlitt, On the Love of Life, 1815