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Loren Eiseley

Loren Eiseley Quotes

Science writer

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Famous Loren Eiseley Quotes

“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.”

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Author:Loren Eiseley
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“Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the enlightenment of the spirit--some ability to have a perceptive rather than an exploitive relationship with his fellow creatures.”

WorldEarthSpiritSufferingFoundGrowsNatureMemoriesAbilityObjectsCreaturesEnlightenmentFellowsBoundsNostalgiaRemedyAlienationIngenuity
Book:The Invisible Pyramid: A Library of America eBook Classic
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“Animals are molded by natural forces they do not comprehend. To their minds there is no past and no future. There is only the everlasting present of a single generation, its trails in the forest, its hidden pathways in the the air and in the sea. There is nothing in the Universe more alone than Man. He has entered into the strange world of history.”

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Author:Loren Eiseley
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“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.”

WorldTryingStillsSoundWaterBrainAirTreeSeaBirdSightFishesInvisibleFixedClimbsComposerUneasySwampsNaturalistSight And SoundFish In The SeaNigerSea Birds
Book:The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature
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“Lights come and go in the night sky. Men, troubled at last by the things they build, may toss in their sleep and dream bad dreams, or lie awake while the meteors whisper greenly overhead. But nowhere in all space or on a thousand worlds will there be men to share our loneliness.”

MenWorldMayDreamLightLastsLyingNightSleepSpaceSkyShareLonelinessThousandAwakeBe A ManComes And GoesNight SkyTossOverheadMeteorsBad DreamSleep And Dream
Book:The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature
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“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.”

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Book:The Invisible Pyramid: A Library of America eBook Classic
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