Nothing perishes in this world; but things merely vary and change their form. To be born, means simply that a thing begins to be something different from what it was before; and dying, is ceasing to be the same thing. Yet, although nothing retains long the same image, the sum of the whole remains constant.

Quoted in Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, Book I, Chapter II (p. 27), James Kay, Jun, & Brother. 1837