Choices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood.
Loren EiseleyRead
One could not pluck a flower without troubling a star.
Interpretation
Every action has consequences that extend beyond the immediate impact.
This quote highlights the interconnectedness of all things, suggesting that even the smallest actions, like picking a flower, can have far-reaching effects. Loren Eiseley implies that our choices and interactions with the world resonate in ways we may not fully comprehend, affecting other entities, represented metaphorically by the 'star'.
In practice
In a speech about environmental preservation, one might say, 'Remember, one could not pluck a flower without troubling a star.'
Choices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood.
Some degree of withdrawal serves to nurture man's creative powers. The artist and the scientist bring out of the dark void, like the mysterious universe itself, the unique, the strange, the unexpected. Numerous observers have testified upon the loneliness of the process.
After 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.
Of all the unexpected qualities of an unexpected universe, the sheer organizing power of animal and plant metabolism is one of the most remarkable. . . . Where it reaches its highest development, in the human mind, we forget it completely. . . . So important does nature regard this unseen combustion . . . that a starving man's brain will be protected to the last while his body is steadily consumed.
The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep.
God knows how many things a man misses by becoming smug and assuming that matters will take their own course.
The religious school she went to, growing up, Ms. Wright said how all the girls had to wear a scarf tied to cover their ears at all times. Based on the biblical idea that the Virgin Mary became pregnant when the Holy Spirit whispered in her ear. The idea that ears were vaginas. That, hearing just one wrong idea, you lost your innocence. One detail too many and youβd be ruined. Overdosed on information.
I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
Although its light is wide and great, the Moon is reflected in a puddle one inch wide. The whole Moon and the entire sky is reflected in one dew drop on the grass.
There's never been a culture that wasn't obsessed with food. The sort of sad thing is that our obsession is no longer with food, but with the price of food.
The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind and to be blown up in our turn.
Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
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