Using Eloquent outside of Laravel. This specific example was used in a Silex installation.

eloquent.php

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

$settings = array(
    'driver'    => 'mysql',
    'host'      => '127.0.0.1',
    'database'  => 'database',
    'username'  => 'root',
    'password'  => 'root',
    'collation' => 'utf8_general_ci',
    'prefix'    => '',
    'charset'	=> 'utf8'
);

$connFactory = new \Illuminate\Database\Connectors\ConnectionFactory(new Illuminate\Container\Container);
$conn = $connFactory->make($settings);

$resolver = new \Illuminate\Database\ConnectionResolver();
$resolver->addConnection('default', $conn);
$resolver->setDefaultConnection('default');

\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model::setConnectionResolver($resolver);


/** use Eloquent **/

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model as Model;

class Admin extends Model {
	/** This property is required at the momment **/
	/** I hope this to be fixed soon **/
	public $table = "admin"; 
	public $timestamps = false;
}

var_dump( Admin::all() );

As an alternative use https://packagist.org/packages/laravel/database which provides eloquent with migration and more to non laravel projects