When I hear the words "social order," I start looking around for somebody to pick a fight with.

To be born with nothing was grim. But to be born with everything, then to lose it, was far more cruel.

[O]n the battlefield a defeated general falls on his sword, usually needing help from a weeping subordinate because finding the space between two ribs and then summoning the strength to pull in a weapon upward is damned difficult to fix for yourself. Nero cut his throat with a razor, but he was supposedly hiding in a garden trench at the time, where there may have been no elegant options; to be skewered on a dibber would have lacked the artistry he coveted. The traditional method in private life is to enter a warm bath and open your veins. This death is contained, relaxing, and reckoned to be more or less painless. (Mind you, it presupposes you live in a grand home with a bath.)