CIn this symposium,my part is only sit in silence.To express one's feelings as the end draws near is too intimate a task.That I would mention only one thought that comes to me as a listener-in:the riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal, there is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill ,there is time to hear the kind voice of friends,and to say to oneself,the work is done. But just as one says that,the answer comes:"The race is over,but the work never is done while the power to work remains.The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest,it cannot be while you still live.But to live is to function ,that is all there is living."
And so I end with a line from a Latin poet who uttered the message more than fifteen hundred years ago:"Death,death plucks my ear and says:live--i am coming."
Holmes, Oliver Wendell,(1841-1935)American jurist, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1902–32).this short passage is a lecture made in a symposium.i am so love this sentence To Live is to Function that i typed this lecture letter by letter.and it is humors that when i search Oliver Wendell Holmes in google Found the Oliver Wendell Holmes on the first few pages is not the jurist but a poet Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809-1894) ,and i love this port for a line composed by him:The Great Thing In This World Is Not So Much Where We Are,But In What Direction We Are Moving