Montesquieu

“ It is a puzzling thing in all religions to give any idea of the pleasures ordained for those who live well. It is easy to terrify the wicked with a long list of the torments which await them; but who knows what to promise the virtuous. Joys seem by nature to be of short duration, the imagination can hardly picture them otherwise.
I have seen descriptions of Paradise sufficient to make all sensible people give up their hopes of it: some make the happy shades play incessantly on the flute ”

“ A poor woman is not even allowed to burn herself when she has a mind to! Did one ever see the like! My mother, my aunt, my sisters, were all decently burned! And, when I come to ask permission of this confounded governor, he gets angry, and begins raging like a madman. ”

“ I remember, in this connection, a story which I heard told by a man who had been in the country of the Mogul; it shows that the Indian priests are as fertile as others in their ideas of the pleasure of Paradise.
A woman who had just lost her husband, went in due form to the governor of the city demanding permission to burn herself ”