God knows how many things a man misses by becoming smug and assuming that matters will take their own course. Loren Eiseley More Quotes by Loren Eiseley More Quotes From Loren Eiseley I am older now, and sleep less, and have seen most of what there is to see and am not very much impressed any more, I suppose, by anything. Loren Eiseley impressedsleeplife 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 geniusdoemen Each man deciphers from the ancient alphabets of nature only those secrets that his own deeps possess the power to endow with meaning. Loren Eiseley alphabetsecretmen The future is neither ahead nor behind, on one side or another. Nor is it dark or light. It is contained within ourselves; its evil and good are perpetually within us. Loren Eiseley darktimephilosophy Nothing grows among its pinnacles; there is no shade except under great toadstools of sandstone whose bases have been eaten to the shape of wine glasses by the wind. Everything is flaking, cracking, disintegrating, wearing away in the long, inperceptible weather of time. The ash of ancient volcanic outbursts still sterilizes its soil, and its colors in that waste are the colors that flame in the lonely sunsets on dead planets. Loren Eiseley sunsetwinelonely I no longer cared about survival...I merely loved. Loren Eiseley friendship-lovesurvivalfriendship The freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind. Loren Eiseley craftscreativitymind I am not nearly so interested in what monkey man was derived from as I am in what kind of monkey he is to become. Loren Eiseley monkeysmindfulnessmen Certainly science has moved forward. But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze. Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned. Loren Eiseley progresssciencereligion Every man contains within himself a ghost continent. Loren Eiseley continentsghostmen It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes. Loren Eiseley human-nature I am what I am and cannot be otherwise because of the shadows. Loren Eiseley i-am-what-i-amshadow Many of us who walk to and fro upon our usual tasks are prisoners drawing mental maps of escape. Loren Eiseley drawingtasksusual The iron did not remember the blood it had once moved within, the phosphorous had forgot the savage brain. Loren Eiseley ironbrainblood At the core of the universe, the face of God wears a smile Loren Eiseley coreuniversefaces In the days of the frost seek an minor sun. Loren Eiseley minorsfrostsun As we passed under a streetlamp I noticed, beside my own bobbing shadow, another great, leaping grotesquerie that had an uncanny suggestion of the frog world about it . . . judging from the shadow, it was soaring higher and more gaily than myself. 'Very well,' you will say, 'Why didn’t you turn around. That would be the scientific thing to do.' But let me tell you it is not done ― not on an empty road at midnight. Loren Eiseley shadowjudgingworld It is a funny thing what the brain will do with memories and how it will treasure them and finally bring them into odd juxtapositions with other things, as though it wanted to make a design, or get some meaning out of them, whether you want it or not, or even see it. Loren Eiseley funny-thingsdesignmemories You think that way as you begin to get grayer and you see pretty plainly that the game is not going to end as you planned. Loren Eiseley gamesphilosophythinking When the human mind exists in the light of reason and no more than reason, we may say with absolute certainty that Man and all that made him will be in that instant gone. Loren Eiseley lightmindmen
