The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
—George Eliot (1819–1880), the ending of Middlemarch
Venuta la sera, mi ritorno a casa ed entro nel mio scrittoio; e in sull'uscio mi spoglio quella veste cotidiana, piena di fango e di loto, e mi metto panni reali e curiali; e rivestito condecentemente, entro nelle antique corti delli antiqui huomini, dove, da loro ricevuto amorevolmente, mi pasco di quel cibo che solum è mio e ch’io nacqui per lui; dove io non mi vergogno parlare con loro e domandarli della ragione delle loro azioni; e quelli per loro humanità mi rispondono; e non sento per quattro hore di tempo alcuna noia, sdimentico ogni affanno, non temo la povertà, non mi sbigottisce la morte: tutto mi transferisco in loro.
Photo of the statue of Machiavelli in the Ufficio Plaza, Florence, by Mr Crash on Flickr
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral....It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.
—The narrator in Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007)
Photo by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.
–King James Bible, Revelations 21: 4
Time does NOT heal all wounds.... It's what you do with the time that heals.
--Worth Kilcrease in an article in Psychology Today, 27 April 2008. Thanks to Tomsgirl at Widowed Village, a website for the widowed, for the quotation in her article.
Ji Lu asked about the best way to serve ghosts and spirits. The master said, "You have not yet served humans well, how is it you wonder about ghosts and spirits?" Ji Lu ventured to ask about death. The master said, "We do not yet understand life, how could we understand death?"
--Confucius (ca 551–479 BC), as quoted in The Analects, 先進 (Xian Jin).
季路問事鬼神。子曰：「未能事人，焉能事鬼？」敢問死。曰：「未知生，焉知死？」
On no soul doth Allah place a burden greater than it can bear.
--Surat 2:286 in chapter Al-Baqara (the Cow) of the Koran. Translation by ?
لا يكلف الله نفساً إلا وسعها - البقرة