For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural death is the obscene mystery the ultimate affront the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.

When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream between the mind's disorder and the return to cool reflection it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.

The Bible was a consolation to a fellow alone in the old cell. The lovely thin paper with a bit of matress stuffing in it if you could get a match was as good a smoke as I ever tasted.

I ask you to pray for me for once age has overtaken us we find consolation only in religion.