How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Wake up! If you knew for certain that you had a terminal illness—if you had little time left to live—you would waste precious little of it! Well, I'm telling you, Dan—you do have a terminal illness: It's called birth. You don't have more than a few years left. No one does! So be happy now, without reason—or you never will be at all." (7.118)
Life is one big terminal illness, Socrates says, so you have to make every moment count. And to him, what counts is being happy. You might contrast this with the views of other philosophers, teachers, or religious thinkers who pick out other things to be the big dealy-o that matters… whether that's obeying religious laws, fulfilling a duty to help society, or something else.
Quote #8
Socrates had told me, long ago, that even for the warrior, there is no victory over death; there is only the realization of Who we all really are. (7.120)
This passage is from Dan's lonely, desperate search to find enlightenment in his years after the gas station. It foreshadows what he'll encounter passing through the gate—see the Symbols, Imagery, Allegory section for more on that.
Quote #9
I realized now that the Grim Reaper, the Death Dan Millman had so feared, had been his great illusion. And so his life, too, had been an illusion, a problem, nothing more than a humorous incident when Consciousness had forgotten itself. (8.67)
After his vision of his body's inevitable decomposition, Dan realizes that in the big picture, our little lives aren't worth worrying over, since we all turn to dust anyway. We can be reassured knowing we are one with everything, a grand Consciousness. Unfortunately, mortal life makes most of us forget that, but with a teacher such as Socrates the truth can be reclaimed.