Loren Eiseley

34 quotes

"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

"Man is dragged hither and thither, at one moment by the blind instincts of the forest, at the next by the strange intuitions of a higher self whose rationale he doubts and does not understand."

Loren Eiseley

"The skull lay tilted in such a manner that it stared, sightless, up at me as though I, too, were already caught a few feet above him in the strata and, in my turn, were staring upward at that strip of sky which the ages were carrying farther away from me."

Loren Eiseley

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

Loren Eiseley

"Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us."

Loren Eiseley

"Mind is locked in matter like the spirit Ariel in a cloven pine. Like Ariel, men struggle to escape the drag of the matter they inhabit, yet it is the spirit that they fear."

Loren Eiseley

"The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness."

Loren Eiseley

"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

"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

"The freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind."

Loren Eiseley

"Man inhabits a realm half in and half out of nature, his mind reaching forever beyond the tool, the uniformity, the law, into some realm which is that of the mind alone."

Loren Eiseley

"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 lonliness of the process."

Loren Eiseley

"Modern man lives increasingly in the future and neglects the present."

Loren Eiseley

"The journey is difficult, immense. We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know."

Loren Eiseley

"If there is Magic on this planet, it is contained in water."

Loren Eiseley

"It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, 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

"Content is a word unknown to life; it is also a word unknown to man."

Loren Eiseley

"Man is dragged hither and thither, at one moment by the blind instincts of the forest, at the next by the strange intuitions of a higher self whose rationale he doubts and does not understand."

Loren Eiseley

"If there is Magic on this planet, it is contained in water."

Loren Eiseley

"Mind is locked in matter like the spirit Ariel in a cloven pine. Like Ariel, men struggle to escape the drag of the matter they inhabit, yet it is the spirit that they fear."

Loren Eiseley

"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 lonliness of the process."

Loren Eiseley

"Modern man lives increasingly in the future and neglects the present."

Loren Eiseley

"The freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind."

Loren Eiseley

"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

"Content is a word unknown to life; it is also a word unknown to man."

Loren Eiseley