One could not pluck a flower without troubling a star.
Loren EiseleyRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the impressive organizing power of metabolism in living organisms and its significance, especially in the human mind, even during dire circumstances.
Loren Eiseley's quote emphasizes the extraordinary capabilities of biological metabolism—the processes that allow life to sustain and organize itself in an unpredictable universe. He points out that while we often overlook the profound importance of these metabolic processes, they are fundamental to our survival. Even when faced with starvation, the brain's functions are prioritized by nature, underscoring the significance of mental faculties amidst physical decline.
Themes
MetabolismNatureHuman MindSurvivalPower
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech on the importance of nature in our lives.
More from Loren Eiseley
All quotes →Choices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Loren EiseleyRead
God knows how many things a man misses by becoming smug and assuming that matters will take their own course.
Loren EiseleyRead
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