„The kabalists say that a man is not dead when his body is entombed. Death is never sudden; for, according to Hermes, nothing goes in nature by violent transitions. Everything is gradual, and as it required a long and gradual development to produce the living human being, so time is required to completely withdraw vitality from the carcass. “Death can no more be an absolute end, than birth a real beginning. Birth proves the preexistence of the being, as death proves immortality,” says the same French kabalist“

— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

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„So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.“
— George Orwell
„We admitted that everything living is born of the dead. For if the soul existed before birth, and in coming to life and being born can be born only from death and dying, must she not after death continue to exist, since she has to be born again?“
— Socrates
„"Tell me who it is who brings about the re-birth (the revolutio)?" is asked of the wise Hermes. "God's Son, the only man, through the will of God," is the answer of the "heathen." "God's son" is the immortal spirit assigned to every human being. It is this divine entity which is the "only man," for the casket which contains our soul, and the soul itself, are but half-entities, and without its overshadowing both body and astral soul, the two are but an animal duad. It requires a trinity to form the complete "man," and allow him to remain immortal at every "re-birth," or revolutio, throughout the subsequent and ascending spheres, every one of which brings him nearer to the refulgent realm of eternal and absolute light.“
— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
„Death was no less a miracle than birth.“
— Stephen King
„Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.“
— Friedrich Nietzsche
„The land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors. There was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors. A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.“
— Chinua Achebe