# Quote — George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

> Everything is possible: everything. Listen. I am old. I am the old serpent, older than Adam, older than Eve. I remember Lilith, who came before Adam and Eve. I was her darling as I am yours. She was alone: there was no man with her. She saw death as you saw it when the fawn fell; and she knew then that she must find out how to renew herself and cast the skin like me. She had a mighty will: she strove and strove and willed and willed for more moons than there are leaves on all the trees of the garden. Her pangs were terrible: her groans drove sleep from Eden. She said it must never be again: that the burden of renewing life was past bearing: that it was too much for one. And when she cast the skin, lo! there was not one new Lilith but two: one like herself, the other like Adam. You were the one: Adam was the other.

- Author: [George Bernard Shaw](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw.md)
- Book: [Back to Methuselah](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Back_to_Methuselah#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah/everything-is-possible

## More from this book

> I had patience with them for many ages: they tried me very sorely. They did terrible things: they embraced death, and said that eternal life was a fable. I stood amazed at the malice and destructiveness of the things I had made...

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah/i-had-patience.md)

> They have redeemed themselves from their vileness, and turned away from their sins. Best of all, they are still not satisfied: the impulse I gave them in that day when I sundered myself in twain and launched Man and Woman on the earth still urges them: after passing a million goals they press on to the goal of redemption from the flesh, to the vortex freed from matter, to the whirlpool in pure intelligence that, when the world began, was a whirlpool in pure force.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah/they-have-redeemed.md)

> The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is this stuff [indicating her body], this flesh and blood and bone and all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the body of this death.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah/the-body-was.md)