Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
-Theodore Roethke
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
-Socrates
Death, "the great leveller", has inspired quite some works on its nature, from both religious and philosophical bases - this is my attempt to cover the main ideas.
