Personal dignity is always, still, an option, a choice that is open to you

From The Time of Our Lives by Peggy Noonan. from her obituary for Jaqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

She was a last link to a certain kind of past, and that is part, but only a part, of why we mourn so. Jackie Kennedy symbolized - she was a connection to a time, to an old America that was more dignified, more private, an America in which standards were higher and clearer and elegance meant something, a time when elegance was a kind of statement, a way of dressing up the world, and so a generous act. She had manners, the kind that remind us that manners spring from a certain moral view - that you do tribute to the world and the people in it by being kind and showing respect, by sending the note and the flowers, by being loyal and cheering a friend. She was a living reminder in the age of Oprah that personal dignity is always, still, an option, a choice that is open to you. She was, really, the last aristocrat. Few people get to symbolize a world, but she did, and that world is receding, and we know it and mourn that, too.