Life and Shadow

(Found here)

“Life is everything. Many doubtless mistake the joy of life for life itself, and, longing after the joy, languish with a thirst at once poor and inextinguishable; but even that, thirst points to the one spring. These love self, not life, and self is but the shadow of life. When it is taken for life itself, and set as the man’s center, it becomes a live death in the man, a devil he worships as his God: the worm of the death eternal he clasps to his bosom as his one joy.

. . .

He who has it not cannot believe in it: how should death believe in life, though all the birds of God are singing jubilant over the empty tomb?”
~George MacDonald