It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. The ashes of an oak in the chimney are no epitaph of that oak, to tell me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell†and when a whirlwind hathblownthedustofthechurchyard intothe church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce,This is the Patrician, this the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran.

-Donne,John
c.1621 Of death. Sermon, 8 Mar.

That all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark, Feb. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.