Loren Eiseley Quotes

In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.

There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel can seize.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

The human condition is the human condition, and what we try to do is illuminate the human condition.

How do we describe the fact of human existence? At a certain point, perhaps, style fails us. Language, even and in particular at its most evocative, becomes less of an aid and more of a difficulty.

I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree.

The life of sense begins by assuming that we can only fitfully live the life of reason.

Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.

Man cannot live on the human plane, he must be either above or below it.

To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.

I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.

Human, all too human.

It may be that there was no reason or purpose, for mankind must always be finding reasons where there are none, and comfort in a purpose that hardly exists.

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting

Death is part of who we are. It guides us. It shapes us. It drives us to madness. Can you still be human if you have no mortal end

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto.

Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.

So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?

And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

To be rational is so glorious a thing, that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title.