Elly McCabe

“A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“But mostly we want the suicidal, at least those who plan to die for existential reasons, to see that these great thinkers didn’t stop thinking at the point of killing God. Being mortal was not the end of the story. They continued to explore the implications of the existential givens, each concluding that life was very much worth living. They argued that we should celebrate life—rejoice in the freedom to build meaning and create our own essence. Life doesn’t end by accepting our mortality or our simple animal nature. In fact, the opposite is true. Acceptance is the beginning of writing one’s own personalised, and never to be repeated, story.”
― Rachel E. Menzies, Mortals: How the fear of death shaped human society

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
― Mark Twain

“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”
― John Keats, Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne