Life as God and music and carbon and energy is a whirling nexus of growing, fusing, and dying beings. It is matter gone wild, capable of choosing its own direction in order to indefinitely forestall the inevitable moment of thermodynamic equilibrium— death. Life is also a question the universe poses to itself in the form of a human being.
— Margulis and Sagan (1995, 55)
Where there are humans, you’ll find flies and Buddhas.
— Kobayashi Issa
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf.
— Annie Dillard (1974, 16)
The birth and death of the leaves are the rapid whirls of the eddy whose wider circles move slowly among the stars.
— Tagore, Stray Birds 92
Life is like an analogy.
— anon
It takes a long time to learn that life is short.
— gnox