Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 361.5 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 39, col. 1601; tr. Edmund Hill):

But when the dead are carried out to burial, people's thoughts do turn to death, and you hear them saying, "Poor soul! That's how it was; he was walking about only yesterday," or, "I saw him only a week ago, we had a conversation about this and that; yes, man is nothing at all."

Yes, they mutter things like that. But perhaps while the dead person is being mourned, while the funeral is being arranged, and preparations being made for it, when the cortège sets off, while the coffin is being laid in the grave, this kind of talk is to be heard. But once the dead have been buried, even this kind of thought is buried too. All those death-dealing preoccupations return, people forget whom they have buried, those who are going to follow them to the grave start thinking about the succession. Back they go to their frauds, their extortions, their perjuries, their drunkenness, to the endless pleasures of the body which are, I don't say going to vanish when they've been exhausted, but already vanishing while they are being sampled. And what is much more pernicious, from the burying of the dead an argument is drawn for the burial of the heart, and they say, Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.

Sed cum efferuntur mortui, cogitatur mors, et dicitur: Vae misero! talis fuit, heri ambulabat; aut: ante septem dies illum vidi, illud atque illud mecum locutus est; nihil est homo.

Murmurant ista. Sed forte cum mortuus plangitur, cum funus curatur, cum exsequiae praeparantur, cum effertur, cum itur, cum sepelitur, viget iste sermo: sepulto autem mortuo, etiam talis cogitatio sepelitur. Redeunt illae curae mortiferae, obliviscitur quem deduxerit, de successione cogitat decessurus; reditur ad fraudes, ad rapinas, ad periuria, ad vinolentiam, ad infinitas corporis voluptates, non dico, cum exhaustae fuerint, perituras, sed cum hauriuntur pereuntes; et, quod est perniciosius, de sepulto mortuo argumentum sepeliendi cordis assumitur, et dicitur: Manducemus et bibamus; cras enim morimur.