Loren Eiseley Quotes - Page 2

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It has been said that great art is the night thought of man. It may emerge without warning from the soundless depths of the unconscious, just as supernovas may blaze up suddenly in the farther reaches of void space.

Loren Eiseley

Art, Night, Men

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Unexpected Universe: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.55, Library of America

19 Copy quote
It is commonplace of all religious thought that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and live for a while in the wilderness. If he is of proper sort, he will return with a message. It may not be a message from the god he set out to seek but even if he has failed in that particular, he will have had a vision or seen a marvel and these are always worth listening to or thinking about.

Loren Eiseley

Religious, Men, Thinking

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I am what I am and cannot be otherwise because of the shadows.

Loren Eiseley

Shadow, I Am What I Am

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Unexpected Universe: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.78, Library of America

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In the desert, an old monk had once advised a traveler, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable.

Loren Eiseley

Voice, Devil, Desert

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Unexpected Universe: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.62, Library of America

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After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.

Loren Eiseley

Taken, Past, Origin Of Life

Loren Eiseley (2011). “The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature”, p.199, Vintage

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This is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives. This is the lonely, magnificent power of humanity. It is . . . the supreme epitome of the reaching out.

Loren Eiseley

Lonely, Empathy, Humanity

Loren Eiseley (2011). “The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature”, p.46, Vintage

10 Copy quote
For the first time in four billion years a living creature had contemplated himself and heard with a sudden, unaccountable loneliness, the whisper of the wind in the night reeds.

Loren Eiseley

Loneliness, Night, Years

Loren Eiseley (2011). “The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature”, p.125, Vintage

12 Copy quote
As for men, those myriad little detached ponds with their own swarming corpuscular life, what were they but a way that water has of going about beyond the reach of rivers?

Loren Eiseley

Nature, Men, Rivers

Loren Eiseley (2011). “The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature”, p.20, Vintage

18 Copy quote
One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.

Loren Eiseley

Eye, Animal, Reflection

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Unexpected Universe: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.24, Library of America

16 Copy quote
What if I am, in some way, only a sophisticated fire that has acquired an ability to regulate its rate of combustion and to hoard its fuel in order to see and walk?

Loren Eiseley

Fire, Order, What If

16 Copy quote
Man would not be man if his dreams did not exceed his grasp... If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there.

Loren Eiseley

Dream, Men, Green World

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Invisible Pyramid: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.8, Library of America

29 Copy quote
Each one of us is a statistical impossibility around which hover a million other lives that were never destined to be born.

Loren Eiseley

Born, Destined, Millions

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Unexpected Universe: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.37, Library of America

39 Copy quote
[On common water.] Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.

Loren Eiseley

Moving, Future, Science

14 Copy quote
It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.

Loren Eiseley

Art, Men, Tragedy

34 Copy quote
Out of the choked Devonian waters emerged sight and sound and the music that rolls invisible through the composer's brain. They are there still in the ooze along the tideline, though no one notices. The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back to the water. There are things still coming ashore.

Loren Eiseley

Sight, Air, Sea

Loren Eiseley (2011). “The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature”, p.54, Vintage

43 Copy quote
Man no longer dreams over a book in which a soft voice, a constant companion, observes, exhorts, or sighs with him through the pangs of youth and age. Today he is more likely to sit before a screen and dream the mass dream which comes from outside.

Loren Eiseley

Dream, Book, Men

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Night Country: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.117, Library of America

18 Copy quote
Each and all, we are riding into the dark. Even living, we cannot remember half the events of our own days.

Loren Eiseley

Dark, Events, Riding

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Unexpected Universe: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.171, Library of America

17 Copy quote
Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us.

Loren Eiseley

Freedom, Animal, Differences

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It has been asserted that we are destined to know the dark beyond the stars before we comprehend the nature of our own journey.

Loren Eiseley

Stars, Dark, Journey

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Unexpected Universe: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.24, Library of America

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Great minds have always seen it. That is why man has survived his journey this long. When we fail to wish any longer to be otherwise than what we are, we will have ceased to evolve. Evolution has to be lived forward. I say this as one who has stood above the bones of much that has vanished, and at midnight has examined his own face.

Loren Eiseley

Journey, Men, Long

19 Copy quote
If you cannot bear the silence and the darkness, do not go there; if you dislike black night and yawning chasms, never make them your profession. If you fear the sound of water hurrying through crevices toward unknown and mysterious destinations, do not consider it. Seek out the sunshine. It is a simple prescription. Avoid the darkness.

Loren Eiseley

Sunshine, Simple, Night

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Night Country: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.17, Library of America

17 Copy quote
It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist for example Vincent Van Gogh, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man. If he is more than a popular story-teller it may take humanity a generation to absorb and grow accustomed to the new geography with which the scientist or artist presents us. Even then, perhaps only the more imaginative and literate may accept him. Subconsciously the genius is feared as an image breaker; frequently he does not accept the opinions of the mass, or man's opinion of himself.

Loren Eiseley

Art, Men, Humanity

11 Copy quote
Choices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood.

Loren Eiseley

Believe, Choices, Childhood

Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Night Country: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.17, Library of America

4 Copy quote
Without the gift of flowers and the infinite diversity of their fruits, man and bird, if they had continued to exist at all, would be today unrecognizable.

Loren Eiseley

Flower, Men, Diversity

Loren Eiseley (2011). “The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature”, p.77, Vintage

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Some degree of withdrawal serves to nurture man's creative powers. The artist and the scientist bring out of the dark void, like the mysterious universe itself, the unique, the strange, the unexpected. Numerous observers have testified upon the loneliness of the process.

Loren Eiseley

Loneliness, Creativity, Dark

10 Copy quote

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Born: September 3, 1907
Died: July 9, 1977
Occupation: Science writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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