September 22

It is human nature to believe in immortality.

1

Everyone feels that he is not nothingness that was brought to life at a certain point in time by someone else. From this comes his certainty that death may end his life, but by no means his existence.

— Schopenhauer

2

The soul does not live in the body like in a house, it lives in it like in a temporary shelter.

— The Kural

3

How many kingdoms do not know of us! The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrify me. When I meditate on my short life amid the eternity that came before and will come after me, on the insignificance of space that I occupy, and even that which I see—a space that disappears into the infinite immeasurability of other spaces, of which I do not know and which do not know of me—I grow both terrified and amazed at why I am in one place and not in another; for there is no basis for me to be here and not there, in the present moment and not before or after. Who has placed me here? By whose command and order was I assigned precisely this place at precisely this time?

Life is a memory of a single fleeting day spent as a guest.

— Pascal

4

Our mortal lives are short; a few moments is all we are given. But our souls do not age and will live forever.

— Phocylides

5

We can see from experience that many people who are convinced in the existence of an afterlife nevertheless yield to vice and commit base deeds, coming up with crafty ways to avoid suffering the consequences of their behavior. But at the same time we see that every truly moral person always knows deep within his soul that his life will not end with death. That is why it seems to me more in line with human nature to base the faith in an afterlife on the feelings of a noble soul and a good life than, on the contrary, to base a good, moral life on the hope of being rewarded in an afterlife. This is what true moral faith really is, whose innocence can rise above all kinds of machinations and contrivances, and which alone is suitable for every human condition, because it leads the human being directly and not in a roundabout way to his true goals.

— Kant

6

People fear death because what they take for life is only a small part of it, limited by their own false notions.

7

Death is the destruction of corporeal organs by means of which I perceive the world the way that it appears to me in this life. Death is the destruction of that glass through which I was looking at the world. But the destruction of the glass in no way includes the destruction of the eye.

The consciousness of our immortality is the voice of the God that dwells within us.