He was rather small featured, with very light blue eyes; indeed so exceedingly light that they were often described as literally white; and when he gazed, with the wildness of imperfect consciousness, caused by indulgence in the potent cup, might give no inapt idea of Pygmalion’s marble statue, on its first wild stare when imbued with inward light and life; although his merry neighbour, Squire Prothero, summed their description up, less classically, as the nearest approach to a boiled salmon’s eyes, or the lack-lustre dullness of a couple of baked gooseberries.
— from The Comical Adventures of Twm Shon Catty (Thomas Jones, Esq.), Commonly known as the Welsh Robin Hood by T. J. Llewelyn (Thomas Jeffery Llewelyn) Prichard

This flesh of mine ne'er strove to emulate A soul so various—took no casual mould Of the first fancy and, contracted, cold, Clogged her forever—soul averse to change As flesh: whereas flesh leaves soul free to range, Remains itself a blank, east into shade, Encumbers little, if it cannot aid.
— from The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning Cambridge Edition by Robert Browning

In his vexation at not finding the value of x , he is driven from mathematical to mechanical biology, and gives us this new definitional value of life--that singularly contumacious quantity which so persistently refuses to be eliminated in scientific equations: "Life is molecular machinery worked by molecular force."
— from Life: Its True Genesis by Horatius Flaccus