When My Hour Comes

George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1904), p. 253:

That I may die childless — that when my hour comes I may turn my face to the wall saying, I have not increased the great evil of human life — then, though I were murderer, fornicator, thief, and liar, my sins shall melt even as a cloud. But he who dies with children about him, though his life were in all else an excellent deed, shall be held accursed by the truly wise, and the stain upon him shall endure for ever.