Photo courtesy of Dave Thomson

IMMORTALITY

On of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed in it. They have also believed the world was flat.
- Notebook, 1900

I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life. And yet -- I am inclined to expect one.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

I was born with an incurable disease, so was everybody--the same one that every machine has--and the knowledge of the fact frightens nobody, damages nobody; but the moment a name is given the disease, the whole thing is changed: fright ensues, and horrible depression, and the life that has learned its sentence is not worth the living.
- Letter to Dr. W. W. Baldwin (between Nov. 1903 and June 1904).

If you prove right and I prove wrong,
A million years from now,
In language plain and frank and strong,
My error I'll avow
to your dear waking face.

If I prove right, by God His grace,
Full sorry I shall be,
For in that solitude no trace
There'll be of you and me.
Nor of our vanished race.

A million years, O patient stone,
You've waited for this message.
Deliver it a million hence;
(Survivor pays expressage).

- from
Contract with
Mrs. T. K. Beecher, 1895