I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, I can't do anything to change events anyway.
Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing -a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
I believe this thought, of the possibility of death - if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong.
We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim - objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.
A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur.