Death! to the happy thou art terrible;
But how the wretched love to think of thee,
O thou true comforter! the friend of all
Who have no friend beside!

[An alien is impersonating Data.] | Alien (as Data): What is death? | Jean-Luc Picard: Oh, is that all. Data, you're asking probably the most difficult of all questions. Some see it as a changing into an indestructible form, forever unchanging. They believe that the purpose of the entire universe is to then maintain that form in an Earth-like garden which will give delight and pleasure through all eternity. On the other hand there are those who hold to the idea of our blinking into nothingness with all of our experiences and hopes and dreams merely a delusion. | Alien (as Data): Which do you believe sir? | Jean-Luc Picard: Considering the marvelous complexity of the universe, its clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that... matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension, I believe that our existence must be more than either of these philosophies. That what we are goes beyond euclidean or other 'practical' measuring systems... and that our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality. | Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Where Silence Has Lease" (28 November 1988) by Jack B. Sowards