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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

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Loren Eiseley
Age: 69 †
Born: 1907
Born: September 3
Died: 1977
Died: July 9
Anthropologist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Science Writer
Lincoln
Nebraska
Understand
Forests
Hither
Next
Instinct
Intuitions
Moments
Blind
Rationale
Nature
Whose
Dragged
Doe
Higher
Doubts
Self
Strange
Instincts
Men
Doubt
Forest
Moment
Intuition
Thither

More quotes by Loren Eiseley

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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
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The secret, if one may paraphrase a savage vocabulary, lies in the egg of night.
Loren Eiseley
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The iron did not remember the blood it had once moved within, the phosphorous had forgot the savage brain.
Loren Eiseley
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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
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At the core of the universe, the face of God wears a smile
Loren Eiseley
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One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.
Loren Eiseley
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I love forms beyond my own, and regret the borders between us
Loren Eiseley
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The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness.
Loren Eiseley
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A man who has once looked with the archaeological eye will never see quite normally. He will be wounded by what other men call trifles. It is possible to refine the sense of time until an old shoe in the bunch grass or a pile of nineteenth century beer bottles in an abandoned mining town tolls in one's head like a hall clock.
Loren Eiseley
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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
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The creative element in the mind of man . . . emerges in as mysterious a fashion as those elementary particles which leap into momentary existence in great cyclotrons, only to vanish again like infinitesimal ghosts.
Loren Eiseley
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There is nothing very 'normal' about nature.
Loren Eiseley
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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
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I no longer cared about survival...I merely loved.
Loren Eiseley
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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
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It has been said repeatedly that one can never, try as he will, get around to the front of the universe. Man is destined to see only its far side, to realize nature only in retreat.
Loren Eiseley
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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
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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
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It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and love for a time in the wilderness.
Loren Eiseley
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I am what I am and cannot be otherwise because of the shadows.
Loren Eiseley