George Eliot Quotes

I think that we are supernatural. We are unique. We're the only animals in the universe that we know of that actually have self-consciousness, a sense of time and our own mortality.

Certainly people have a lot tougher situations than I've had to deal with. But I will say we are all dying from the moment we are born. This is not just rehearsal.

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.

A human being is only breath and shadow.

Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

We need to appreciate how precious life is.

You want to know the secret of life? It is to breathe in and out. And the mystery of life? You never know when it is going to end.

I feel our relationship to life, to the rest of the world, is very tenuous. It feels fleeting.

We are occupants. No one has any lasting purchase on life or on the planet.

One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.

The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence. The destruction of Troy. The fall of the petals from fruit trees in blossom. To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence - that is beautiful.

Throughout this life, you can never be certain of living long enough to take another breath.

What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?

You are the result of billions of years of evolution. You will only live for a few years and will never exist again. Absolutely beautiful

Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange.

We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.

Life, the permission to know death.

Mortalhood is a fine state to visit, but you'd better not call it home.

The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.

Life is once. Forever.