In his only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, the poet and philosopher Rainer Maria Rilke had his protagonist expound on an old wisdom, one in which “people knew (or perhaps had an intuition) that they bore their death within them like the stone within a fruit. . . . It was something people quite simply had, and its possession conferred a peculiar dignity, and a tranquil pride.”
Source: Column: Let’s Talk About Death — Specifically Yours | Valley News