Loren Eiseley Quotes

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.

Fullness of knowledge always means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance; and that is always conducive to humility and reverence.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.

Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are.

I'm not trying to sound like I turned into some kind of wise man, but it's nice to realize that your little pocket of the world isn't the whole world.

To love beauty is to see light.

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.

We can scale the heights of mountains and see the world rayed out before us, but we fail to recognize that which is before us.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

I always see my wife as the clever one, as the wise one in the family.

The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.

To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea.

Wise is the man who does not disdain any character and instead, examining him with a searching look, plumbs him to the very main-springs of his being.

Were one merely to seek information, one should inquire of the man who hates, but if one wishes to know what truly is, one better ask the one who loves.

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

I'm constantly humbled.

Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.

I wake up every day and look at my own ugly mug in the mirror and don't think twice about it. The fact that other people might want to look at me still feels funny. It's flattering, but funny.

The earth incites the wonder and admiration of man even though he is imperfect and his understanding greatly limited.

I don't sense that I am someone's hero, though I'm happy when people like my work. I've learned how to be gracious about it, but I try to let it go by. I've seen how, if people start taking on those accolades, it can ruin them completely.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

I was always very grateful I was never hot. In the entire length of my career, I haven't been the most adored.

I just learned not to take a single thing for granted, and I think it just is extraordinary.

Once I opened my eyes to the realities of life, I couldn't close them.