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“So be it, cuckoo!
Let us, you and I, compare
the flow of our tears,
for I, too, in this sad world
do little but lift my cry.”
― Anonymous, The Tale of the Heike

“Shortly before death he was asked what his wishes were regarding funeral arrangements.
"Don't trouble yourself, the stench will ensure that I get buried."
"But", the other objected, "isn't it wrong that the body of a great man should be exposed as food for birds and dogs?"
"On the contrary, " he said, "it's the part of a great man, even in death, to be of service to the living.”
― Robert F. Dobbin, The Cynic Philosophers: From Diogenes to Julian

“Years ago, when the medical community announced that self-righteous indignation can be an addiction, as severe as any drug abuse, I expected the public to take notice. Surely (I thought) the vast majority of moderate, reasonable people will now stop listening to those vehement wrath-junkies—the essers—out there, constantly spewing hate from pulpits of the left or right, or religious or paranoiac mania? Now that the pattern is understood, won’t this tend to disempower the irate, who refuse to negotiate, and instead empower those who want to engage in reason? To listen to their neighbors and work out pragmatic solutions to problems? Those who prefer positive-sum games. Won’t this now-verified scientific fact undermine the frantic types, who have ruined argument and discourse in public life, by portraying their opponents in stark terms of pure evil, opposed by pharisaical good? By showing that their fury arises out of an addictive chemical high that they secrete within their own skulls?”
― David Brin, Existence

“The Precursors taught us that each life is a finite interval, with a beginning and an end. Any individual creature, although a miracle, is not that important in the overall scheme of things. What matters, the Precursors said, is continuity and renewal. In their view each of us is immortal, not because anything related to a specific individual lives forever, but because each life becomes a critical link, either culturally or genetically or both, in the neverending chain of life.”
― gentry lee, Rama Revealed