Man did not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it. And whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Chief Seattle, about 1850.

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the ight. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Dying words of Crowfoot,
a Blackfoot chief, 1890

No man is an Island, entire of itself; each is a part of the Continent, a piece of the Main. If a clod be washed away, Europe is the less, as such as if a Promontory were, as if a manor of thy friend's or thine own were. Every man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in Mankind. Therefore, never send to know for whom the Bell tolls; it tolls for Thee.
John Donne, Devotions XVII

REQUIEM
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die.
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Home is the sailor
Home from the sea;
And the hunter
Home from the hill

Robert Lewis Stevenson