A theory of personal resurrection or reincarnation of the individual is untenable when we but pause to consider the magnitude of the idea. On the contrary, I must believe that rather than the survival of all, we must look for survival only in the spirit of the good we have done in passing through. Once obsolete, an automobile is thrown to the scrap heap. Once here and gone, the human life has likewise served its purpose. If it has been a good life, it has been sufficient. There is no need for another.

— Luther Burbank

At some indeterminate point in their life cycles, they cause themselves to be placed in artificial stone or wooden cocoons, or chrysalises. They have an idea that they will someday emerge from these in an altered state, which they symbolize with carvings of themselves with wings. However, we did not observe that any had actually done so.

— Margaret Atwood

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Believe that you are someone worth saving.

— Slade Combs

Be patient, child!” said the Music. “But she will forget me.” “Do not worry, child. I am there. I shall not forget.” And she stared out at the planets and gentle stars and the galaxies and became forlorn for she had known a special love.“The Universe is so large, just look at it!” she cried. “Believe.” The Music sang.

— David Paul Kirkpatrick

Be prepared for a bit of a stinker! My little lambs always start bleating when told they're not going to Heaven.

— E.A.A. Wilson

But forever was a useless term, relevant only for the dead.

— K. Martin Beckner

But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.

— C.S. Lewis

But if you wish, you can imagine that the Shadow does wait for your return and that it does remember everything that has gone before and that it doesn’t let you accept yourself as perfect until you let it. There is truth in that. That is why a child usually cries as soon as it’s born. With its first breath, the Shadow returns.

— Christopher Pike

But like so many others nowadays, poor Julian wanted to believe that man's life is profoundly more significant than it is. His sickness was the sickness of our age. We want so much not to be extinguished at the end that we will go to any length to make conjurer-tricks for one another simply to obscure the bitter, secret knowledge that it is our fate not to be.

— Gore Vidal