Elihu Burritt Quotes

I think from my experience in war and life and science, it all has made me believe that we have one life on this planet. We have one chance to live it and to contribute to the future of society and the future of life. The only "afterlife" is what other people remember of you.

No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.

We each have our lives... What matters is not how long those lives last, but what we do with them.

The human condition comprehends more than the condition under which life has been given to man. Men are conditioned beings because everything they come in contact with turns immediately into a condition of their existence. The world in which the vita activa spends itself consists of things produced by human activities; but the things that owe their existence exclusively to men nevertheless constantly condition their human makers.

If we one day cease to exist, what will be remarkable is that we were ever here at all.

What never vary are the necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die there.

Let's pretend that we're human beings and that we're actually alive.

Not caring for their lives' is it? Why, what in the world is there that we should care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never offers us a second time.

The embodied self is the same person who woke to the world in a burst of visonary immediacy, who soon found that he was not the center of that world but on the contrary, a dependent and even hapless creature, and who then discovered that he was doomed to die

The world was not meant to be a prison in which man awaits his execution.

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.

Sure we fit. We wouldn't be here if we didn't. But the world wasn't made for us and it will endure without us.

Man cannot live on the human plane, he must be either above or below it.

The humans create life, and senselessly cause death. For nothing.

Have not all past human beings parted, And must not all the present, one day part?

If there is no other life, then this one has been enough to make it worth being born myself...a human being.

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one

So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

A man, even if seriously sick or prevented in the exercise of its higher functions, is and will be always a man ... [he] will never become a 'vegetable' or an 'animal,'" the Pope said. "The intrinsic value and personal dignity of every human being does not change depending on their circumstances.

Every human being has to find their own peace. Peace is within you and me. When you and I can experience who we really are, what life is, and what we are doing here, that's the day peace will begin in this world.

The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here?

I think every person has the ability to affect change...through our every thought our every word, the way that we interact with other people. We are constantly affecting the world.

I came into this world anxious to uncover the meaning of things, my soul desirous to be at origin of the world, and here I am an object among other objects.

Our ingress into the world Was naked and bare; Our progress through the world Is trouble and care.

It is too little to call man a little world; Except God, man is a diminutive to nothing.