bodies are only the means of fixing life and holding it to its way.
 Honoré de Balzac, Séraphîta (1834). copy citation

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Author Honoré de Balzac
Source Séraphîta
Topic life body
Date 1834
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1432/1432-h/1432-h.htm

Context

“You obtain none but dead substances, from which you have driven the unknown force that holds in check the decomposition of all things here below, and of which cohesion, attraction, vibration, and polarity are but phenomena. Life is the thought of substances; bodies are only the means of fixing life and holding it to its way. If bodies were beings living of themselves they would be Cause itself, and could not die. “When a man discovers the results of the general movement, which is shared by all creations according to their faculty of absorption, you proclaim him mighty in science, as though genius consisted in explaining a thing that is!” source