Life

Life

Life (cf. biota) is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (death), or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate. Biology is the science concerned with the study of life.

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Famous quotes containing the word life:

    They borrow words for thoughts they cannot feel,
    That with a seeming heart their tongue may speak;
    And in their show of life more dead they live
    Than those that to the earth with many tears they give.
    Jones Very (1831–1880)

    If certain, when this life was out—
    That your’s and mine, should be—
    I’d toss it yonder, like a Rind,
    And take Eternity—
    Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

    No self in the mass: the braver being,
    The body that could never be wounded,
    The life that never would end, no matter
    Who died, the being that was an abstraction.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)