Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.

Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26
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Added on 17-Nov-25 | Last updated 10-Nov-25
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