Though men in the mass forget the origins of their need, they still bring wolfhounds into city apartments, where dog and man both sit brooding in wistful discomfort. The magic that gleams an instant between Argos and Odysseus is both the recognition of diversity and the need for affection across the illusions of form. It is nature's cry to homeless, far-wandering, insatiable man: "Do not forget your brethren, nor the green wood from which you sprang. To do so is to invite disaster.
Loren EiseleyEach man deciphers from the ancient alphabets of nature only those secrets that his own deeps possess the power to endow with meaning.
Loren EiseleyAfter 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 EiseleyThe freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind.
Loren EiseleyIt was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes.
Loren EiseleyPerhaps 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.
Loren Eiseley