"... it is true that I do not respect [human life] more than I respect my own life. And if it is easy for me to kill, that is because it is difficult for me to die."

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If we confine ourselves to a general and distant reflection on the ills of human life, that can have no effect to prepare us for them. If by close and intense meditation we render them present and intimate to us, that is the true secret for poisoning all our pleasures, and rendering us perpetually miserable.

— David Hume