When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.
Phil Conners in Groundhog Day
- NGC 6822 (Wikipedia)
NGC 6822 (also known as Barnard’s Galaxy, IC 4895, or Caldwell 57) is a barred irregular galaxy approximately 1.6 million light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Part of the Local Group of galaxies, it was discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1884, with a six-inch refractor telescope. It is the closest non-satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, but lies just outside its virial radius. It is similar in structure and composition to the Small Magellanic Cloud. It is about 7,000 light-years in diameter.
- BE ALIVE
- sometimes the chemistry talks
You want a prediction about the weather, you’re asking the wrong Phil. I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.
Phil Conners in Groundhog Day- One important event in this period was the initial establishment of terrestrial life in what is known as the Silurian-Devonian Terrestrial Revolution: vascular plants emerged from more primitive land plants, dikaryan fungi started expanding and diversifying along with glomeromycotan fungi, and three groups of arthropods (myriapods, arachnids and hexapods) became fully terrestrialized.
- The Triassic began in the wake of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, which left the Earth’s biosphere impoverished; it was well into the middle of the Triassic before life recovered its former diversity.
- fossil
- paleontology
The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
David Hume, On SuicideI am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.
Émile Zola, My Hates (1866)I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
Émile ZolaIf you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you: I am here to live out loud!
Émile Zola quoted in Writers on Writing (1986) by Jon WinokurBelieve, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.
Helen Keller, We Bereaved (1929)Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen KellerThis whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?
Henry David ThoreauCuriosity, the overwhelming desire to know, is not characteristic of dead matter. Nor does it seem to be characteristic of some forms of living organism, which, for that very reason, we can scarcely bring ourselves to consider alive.
Isaac Asimov, Gaither’s Dictionary of Scientific QuotationsOur life evokes our character and you find out more about yourself as you go on.
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (1988)Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, last wordsIn order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.
René Descartes (1644), Principles of PhilosophyOf the gladest moments in human life, methinks is the departure upon a distant journey to unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the Slavery of Home, man feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood….afresh dawns the morn of life…
Richard Francis Burton, Journal Entry (2 December 1856)- Boltzmann brain
Who can compare with justice? It creates life.
Sumerian proverb from Urim, 3rd millennium BCE
- Life (Wikipedia)
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. Biology is the science that studies life.