When we die, only one of two things is possible: either that which I consider to be my self will transform into a different separate being, or I will cease to be a separate being and will merge with God. In either case, what happens will be good.
If life is sleep and death is an awakening, then my seeing myself as a being separate from everything else is a dream.
— After Schopenhauer
Death is the destruction of the body through which I have perceived the world the way it appears to me in this life; it is the destruction of the glass through which I have been looking. Whether it will be replaced by another, or whether that which was looking through the window will merge with everything—that is something we cannot know.
Life must have a certain limit, just like the fruits of the trees and the earth, just like the times of the year, everything must begin, continue and come to an end. Wise people submit to this order willingly.
— Cicero
The question of whether my self will remain after death—separate from the rest of the world—has only one answer: if it is best that separate life should continue after death, then it will continue; if not, then it will end.
Everything that I know about God compels me to believe that what he has created is best for us.
— After Emerson
Because death delivers us so easily from all our difficulties and misfortunes, those who do not believe in immortality ought to desire it. On the other hand, the people who do believe in immortality, those who are awaiting a new life, ought to desire it even more. If neither the former nor the latter desire it, it is only because people suffer when they die. Suffering keeps people away from death.
No one knows what death is, whether it is good or bad. But everyone is afraid of it, as if they know for certain that it is bad.
— Plato
Even though a person knows that lightning had already struck when he hears its thunder, and therefore that it cannot kill him, he is nevertheless always frightened by a thunderclap. It is the same with death. Even though we know that corporeal death destroys only the body, not the life of the soul, we still cannot but be afraid of it. But an enlightened human being, having conquered this fear within himself, remembers that life is not in his body, but in his soul; an unenlightened human being, on the other hand, thinks that everything dies with death, and he is very afraid of it and hides from it, like a foolish person who hides from a thunderclap, even though it does not threaten his life.
We should live in such a way that we neither fear nor desire death.
