“Why does death engender fear? Because death meant change, a change greater then we have ever known, and because death was indeed a mirror that made us see ourselves as never before. A mirror that we should cover, as people in olden days covered mirrors when someone died, for fear of an evil. For with all our care and pain for those who had gone, it was ourselves too we felt the agony for. Perhaps ourselves above all.”

“Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.”

“We see the evil in others because we know the evil in ourselves. We never forgive those whou wound us because we believe that we would never be forgiven. We say the painful truth to others because we want to hide it from ourselves. We show our strength, so that no one can see our frailty. That is why, whenever you judge your brother, be aware that it is you who is in the dock.”

“Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are.”

“Why are we so afraid when we think about death? Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God's Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in Him.”

“Since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.”