Quotes about elixir

A collection of quotes on the topic of elixir, life, human, humanity.

Quotes about elixir

“Life may contain the "essence" (what else could?); recollection, the repetition in imagination, may decipher the essence and deliver to you the "elixir"; and eventually you may even be privileged to "make" something out of it, "to compound the story." But life itself is neither essence nor elixir, and if you treat as such it will only play its tricks on you.”

Hannah Arendt book Men in Dark Times

Source: Men in Dark Times

Life, Imagination

“Man is neither unique nor central nor necessarily here to stay. But he is a product of circumstances special to the point of disbelief. And if man in his current predicament seeks a fair mystique to see him through, then I can only suggest that he consider his genes. For they are marked. They are graven by luck beyond explanation. They are stamped by forces that we shall never know. But even so, in the hieroglyph of the human emergence certain symbols must stand for all to read: Change is the elixir of the human circumstance, and acceptance of challenge the way of our kind. We are bad-weather animals, disaster’s fairest children. For the soundest of evolutionary reasons man appears at his best when times are worst.”

Robert Ardrey book African Genesis

African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961)

Children, Way, Appearance, Change

“And yet
to wine, to opium even, I prefer
the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself;
and in the wasteland of desire
your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

Source: Les Fleurs du Mal

Love, Wine

“The only way that I could figure they could improve upon Coca-Cola, one of life's most delightful elixirs, which studies prove will heal the sick and occasionally raise the dead, is to put bourbon in it.”

Lewis Grizzard (1946–1994) American journalist

Life, Way, Study, Dead

“We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever… and all the time it is carrying us about… It is the human nervous system itself.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Source: Cosmic Trigger Volume I: Final Secret of the Illuminati

God, Secret, Time

“Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 8 : The West and the Rest: Intercivilizational Issues, § 1 : Western Universalism, p. 184

Democracy, Universe

“When your laboratory explodes, lacing your body with a supercharged elixir, what do you do? You don't just lie there. You crawl out of the rubble, hideously scarred, and swear vengeance on the world. You keep going. You keep trying to take over the world.”

Austin Grossman book Soon I Will Be Invincible

Source: Soon I Will Be Invincible (2007), Ch. 21: No Prison Can Hold Me

Lie, World

“Still reeling from the buzzing of German-designed appliances, and desperately trying to find a stall that served coffee and muffins instead of edible knickers and herbal elixirs, I watched bemused at the Sexpo as the craggy Pricasso dipped his dangly bit into paint and dabbed at a piece of paper on the easel.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Cape Argus staff, Put an end to dangling conversations, Cape Argus, South Africa, 16 September 2008, 13, Independent Online]
About

Coffee, Painting

“We all travelled light, taking with us only what we considered to be the bare essentials of life. When we opened our luggage for Customs inspection, the contents of our bags were a fair indication of character and interests. Thus Margo's luggage contained a multitude of diaphanous garments, three books on slimming, and a regiment of small bottles each containing some elixir guaranteed to cure acne. Leslie's cases held a couple of roll-top pullovers and a pair of trousers which were wrapped around two revolvers, an air-pistol, a book called Be Your Own Gunsmith, and a large bottle of oil that leaked. Larry was accompanied by two trunks of books and a brief case containing his clothes. Mother's luggage was sensibly divided between clothes and various volumes on cooking and gardening. I travelled with only those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids. Thus, by our standards, fully equipped, we left the clammy shores of England.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

On the family's move from England to Corfu
My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Life, Books, Dogs, Travel

“And when you are poor and have to carry
The Christian creed and wife and children
All on your back, it is too much!
That's why I made the Elixir of Youth,
Which landed me in the jail at Peoria
Branded a swindler and a crook
By the upright Federal Judge!”

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) American writer

" Dr. Siegfried Iseman http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dr-siegfried-iseman/"

Children, Youth

“I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.”

Ernest Renan (1823–1892) French philosopher and writer

The Republic.
Ernest Renan: a Critical Biography (1964)

Life

“English: Astrology is a science in itself and contains an illuminating body of knowledge. It taught me many things, and I am greatly indebted to it. Geophysical evidence reveals the power of the stars and the planets in relation to the terrestrial. In turn, astrology reinforces this power to some extent. This is why astrology is like a life-giving elixir to mankind.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Die Astrologie ist eine Wissenschaft für sich. Aber eine wegweisende. Ich habe viel aus ihr gelernt und vielen Nutzen aus ihr ziehen können. Die physikalischen Erkenntnisse unterstreichen die Macht der Sterne über irdisches Geschick. Die Astrologie aber unterstreicht in gewissem Sinne wiederum die physikalischen Erkenntnisse. Deshalb ist sie eine Art Lebens-elixier für die Gesellschaft!
German quote attributed to Einstein in Huters astrologischer Kalender 1960 [A]
Translated by Tad Mann, unidentified 1987 work
Contradicted by Denis Hamel, The End of the Einstein-Astrology-Supporter Hoax, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 31, No. 6 (Nov-Dec 2007), pp. 39-43
Alice Calaprice, The Expanded Quotable Einstein: "Attributed to Einstein […] An excellent example of a quotation someone made up and attributed to Einstein in order to lend an idea credibility."
Misattributed

Life, Star, Knowledge, Science

“Why in this world of ours there should be so much suffering no one knows. But this we know; that, evil existing, the world being such as it is, we can win from evil, if we choose, an inestimable good, namely — the conviction that there is in us a power not of the senses, the conviction that spirit exists, and exists in us.
A sceptic may say that in a world ideally conceivable we might have secured this precious conviction without the necessity of undergoing the ordeal of pain. To which the reply is: that in a world ideally conceivable what he says may be true; but in the world as it is, with which alone we are concerned, we have ample cause for gratitude that we can turn suffering to such far-reaching account, that we can distil from the bitter root this divine elixir; that by manfully bearing the pains of the senses, inexplicable though they be, we are able to gain the certainty that a power not born of the senses exists in us, operates in us. It is this effect of pain that accounts for the serenity and peace of many patient sufferers, a peace and a serenity which surround their bed of misery with a kind of halo.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 7 : Spiritual Progress
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Pain, World, Peace, Sense

“Anyone who tries to sell you the elixir of life in the form of a perfect society - is your enemy - the enemy of your humanity.”

Akber Choudhry (1967)

http://www.qern.org/ur/%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85-%D8%B2%D9%86%D8%AF%DB%81-%DB%81%D9%88%D8%AA%D8%A7-%DB%81%DB%92-%DB%81%D8%B1-%DA%A9%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%84%D8%A7-%DA%A9%DB%92-%D8%A8%D8%B9%D8%AF/ <br class="br">Describing some Muslim preachers who try to sell the utopia of a perfect Islamic society.

Life, Perfection

“The tragic element in poetry is like Saturn in alchemy, — the Malevolent, the Destroyer of Nature; but without it no true Aurum Potabile, or Elixir of Life, can be made.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Table-Talk (1857)

Life, Nature