Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes physical entities that do have biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased, or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. The criteria can at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids, or potential synthetic life as "living". Biology is the science concerned with the study of life.
Science
Within the short span of a human life and with man's limited powers of memory, any stock of knowledge worthy of the name is unattainable except by the greatest mental economy. Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development (1893) p. 490, Tr. Thomas J. McCormack.
Science
Too often, this concern for the big picture is simply obscurantist and is put forward by people who prefer vagueness and mystery to (partial) answers. Vagueness is at times necessary and mystery is never in short supply, but I don’t think they’re anything to worship. Genuine science and mathematical precision are more intriguing than are the “facts” published in supermarket tabloids or a romantic innumeracy which fosters credulity, stunts skepticism, and dulls one to real imponderables.
John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), pp. 126-127
Science
Alas! A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections — a mere heart of stone.
Charles Darwin, in a letter to T.H. Huxley, 9 July 1857, More Letters of Charles Darwin, Francis Darwin and A.C. Seward, editors (1903) volume I, chapter II: "Evolution, 1844-1858", page 98.