Born on this date in 1907 was Loren Eiseley, US anthropologist, and writer. His books include The Immense Journey, Darwin's Century, The Unexpected Universe, The Night Country and his memoir, All the Strange Hours.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.
We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know.
We cannot pluck a flower without disturbing a star.
One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.
Each one of us is a statistical impossibility around which hover a million other lives that were never destined to be born.
It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.
Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us.
The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness.
Every man contains within himself a ghost continent.
Tomorrow lurks in us, the latency to be all that was not achieved before.
