Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Thinking of death makes us tenderly cling to our affections.”
- Date
- 1796
Meaning of “Thinking of death makes us tenderly cling to…”
Awareness of mortality intensifies attachment by reminding a person that relationships and opportunities for affection are finite.
Where does it come from?
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter VII; represented Cassell & Company 1889 text in Project Gutenberg #3529. “Thinking of death makes us tenderly cling to our affections” closes the same meditation on mortality and immediately becomes a personal assurance to the recipient of the letter. The line remains first-person epistolary reflection, not a universal clinical claim about bereavement or attachment.
