“Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness, when bequeathed by those who, when alive, would part with nothing…and those who, when dying, impoverish their relations, by leaving their fortunes to be expended in masses for themselves, have been shrewdly said to leave their own souls to their heirs.”
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832) was an English cleric and author of Lacon of Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those Who Think (1820) reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, LLC (2004). CCCXLI, 145.