Significant sentences from Loren Eiseley's The Star Thrower, a collection of Eiseley's essays on nature.
The following ideas come from a series of essays:
"A little while ago--about one hundred million years, as the geologist estimated time in the history of our four-billion-year-old planet...." p. 67.
"There is something particularly in a spider monkey's tail, that is too bold and purposeful to be easily called the product of simple chance." p. 81.
"At least it may cause the true philosopher to pause hesitantly and ponder before he dismisses the universe as totally a world of chance." p. 81.
"Sometimes of late years I find myself thinking the most beautiful sight in the world might be the birds taking over New York after the last man has run away to the hills." p. 88.
"...on the other hand the machine does not bleed, ache, hang for hours in the empty sky in a torment of hope to learn the fate of another machine, nor does it cry out with joy nor dance in the air with the fierce passion of a bird." [From a beautiful essay, "The Birds and the Machine," in which an injured hawk recuperates in an old barn while its mate circles and circles, wondering what is happening, and then migrates for the winter. When the mate returns, the injured hawk is ready to rejoin it and their joyous reactions on being reunited reveal the differences between a machine and a living thing.]
"I was the only man in the world who saw him do it. Everybody else was hurrying." p. 92.
"God knows how many things a man misses by becoming smug and assuming that matters will take their natural course." p. 93.
"As it was, I had just one sleepy eye half open, and it was through that that I saw the end of humanity." p. 93.
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