Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.
Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.
Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.
Not to be born at all would be the best thing for man.
The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.
I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it.
Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.
