Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Interpretation
Life has its joys and death brings peace, but the process of moving from one to the other can be difficult.
This quote by Isaac Asimov reflects on the contrasting experiences of life and death. While life can be enjoyed and death is portrayed as a serene state, the challenges often arise during the transition from life to death, highlighting the inevitability of mortality and the struggles associated with letting go of life.
In practice
In a eulogy celebrating a life well-lived, one could share this quote to emphasize the peace of death after a joyful life.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
We experience the grace of an infinite God, but grace is not infinite.
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge.
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots.
The danger of psychedelic drugs, the danger of mind-opening, the danger of consciousness expansion, the danger of inner discovery is a danger to the establishment.
What is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It's not the spirit in you, since that is already enlightened, and has no need to seek. No, it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher.
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