The Earth Quotes

I say: The time has come for my courageous and proud people, after decades of displacement and colonial occupation and ceaseless suffering, to live like other peoples of the earth, free in a sovereign and independent homeland.
- Mahmoud Abbas

I am not an atheist but an earthiest. Be true to the earth.
- Edward Abbey

The fire. The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante's paradise could equal it. One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn.
- Edward Abbey

The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.
- Edward Abbey

Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break....I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.
- Edward Abbey

Be loyal to what you love, be true to the earth, fight your enemies with passion and laughter.
- Edward Abbey

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
- Mark Twain

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.
- Mark Twain

This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!
- Letter to J. H. Twichell, 1/29/1901
- Mark Twain

The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably won't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.
- Diane Ackerman

Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way.
- Diane Ackerman

Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world.
- Diane Ackerman

Five weeks in the hospital fled as if down a sinkhole into the middle of the earth.... Can waiting by definition slow, flash by?... Time becomes even more elastic than usual--minutes can stretch for ages and days suddenly snap together. [p. 97]
- Diane Ackerman

Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are one in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.
- J R R Tolkien

[Fantasy] contains many things besides elves and fays and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are one in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.
- J R R Tolkien

And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!
- J R R Tolkien

The world has changed.
I see it in the water.
I feel it in the Earth.
I smell it in the air.
Much that once was is lost,
For none now live who remember it.
- J R R Tolkien

Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,
for ever blest, since here did lie
and here with lissom limbs did run
beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun,
Lthien Tinviel
more fair than Mortal tongue can tell.
Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backward hurled;
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea
that Lthien for a time should be.
- J R R Tolkien

For if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomable at the foundations of the Earth.
- J R R Tolkien

Advertising is the principal reason why the business man has come to inherit the earth.
- James Randolph Adams

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
- John Adams

There's terrible evil in the world."
It comes from men," said Holly. "All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.
- Richard Adams

Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.
- Richard Adams

When angels' tears do flood the earth, the gates of hell shall see rebirth. Wheh the demise of angels doth impend , the human boy shall meet his end' Halo -Alexandra Adornetto
- Alexandra Adornetto

There was nothing else to do but call upon the Creator,
praying, begging, pleading, bargaininganything to make
him protect Xavier. I couldn't have him ripped away from
me like that. I could survive emotional turmoil; I could
survive the most intense physical torture. I could survive
Armageddon and holy fire raining down upon the earth, but I
could not survive without him.
- Alexandra Adornetto

But there is a cure in the house,
and not outside it, no,
not from others but from them,
their bloody strife. We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.
- Aeschylus

What atonement is there for blood spilt upon the earth?
- Aeschylus

The glacier was God's great plough set at work ages ago to grind, furrow, and knead over, as it were, the surface of the earth.
- Louis Agassiz

Beyond, the unknown lay before us once more, and another impossible task. The four of us emerged from the earth and turned our steps west, toward the last hope for Salvation.
- Ann Aguirre

The earth is my altar, the sky is my dome, mind is my garden, the heart is my home and I'm always at home - yea, I'm always at Om.
- Eden Ahbez

Alone because love was
one of those feelings that you could never have control of. And she needed
to be in control. She had loved before, had been loved, had tasted what it was
to dream, and had felt what it was to dance on air. She had also learned what
it was to cruelly land back on the earth with a thud.
- Cecelia Ahern

She had loved before, had been loved, had tasted what it was to dream, and had felt what it was to dance on air. She had also learned what it was to cruelly land back on the earth with a thud. Having to take care of her sister's child had sent her love away and there had been no one since. She had learned not to lose control of her feelings again.
- Cecelia Ahern

Sitting in the study hall he opened the lid of his desk and changed the number pasted up inside from seventy-seven to seventy-six. But the Christmas vacation was very far away: but one time it would come because the earth moved round always.
-Stephen Dedalus-
- James Joyce

It is also worth noting that the earth gravitational field though locally 'vertical' is globally radial as the centrifugal field in the carrousel is. However, the big difference between the two is that the former decreases in intensity with distance from its center, while the latter increases its intensity with distance from the rotation center. But ... (think about it a little), the farther from the center of rotation, the closer we are to the rest of the Universe!
- Felix Alba Juez

Then she opened her eyes, Veronika did not think 'this must be heaven'. Heaven would never use a fluorescent tube to light a room, and the pain - which started a fraction of a second later - was typical of the Earth. Ah, that Earth pain - unique, unmistakable.
- Paulo Coelho

He also said that this was not just a human gift, that everything on the face of the earth had a soul, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal - or even just a simple thought.
- Paulo Coelho

I love you because all the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth.
- Paulo Coelho

I came to set fire to the earth. And I am watchful that the fire grow.
May the fire of love grow in our hearts.
May the fire of transformation glow in our movements.
May the fire of purification burn away our sins.
May the fire of justice guide our steps.
May the fire of wisdom illuminate our paths.
May the fire that spreads over the Earth never be extinguished.
- Paulo Coelho

Do you know what I've learned? That although ecstasy is the ability to stand outside yourself, dance is a way of rising up into space, of discovering new dimensions while still remaining in touch with your body. When you dance, the spiritual world and the real world manage to coexist quite happily. I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies.
- Paulo Coelho

I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies
- Paulo Coelho

It is a merciful provision my dears, for it takes three or four women to get each man into, through, and out of the world. You are costly creatures, boys, and it is well that mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters love their duty and do it so well, or you would perish off the face of the earth,' said Mrs. Jo solemnly...
- Louisa May Alcott

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- Neil Armstrong

Everyone I have lost
in the closing of a door
the click of the lock
is not forgotten, they
do not die but remain
within the soft edges
of the earth, the ash
of house fires and cancer
in sin and forgiveness
huddled under old blankets
dreaming their way into
my hands, my heart
closing tight like fists.
- Indian Boy Love Song #1
- Sherman Alexie

she braided my sister's hair with hands that smelled deep
roots buried in the earth
she told me the old stories
how time never mattered
when she died
they gave me her clock
- Sherman Alexie

You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth between your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks? The bricks will not be moved (page 87).
- Monica Ali

Yes," Jace said, unable to help himself, "I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water water supply - I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe.
- Cassandra Clare

Haven't you ever heard that modesty is an attractive trait?"
"Only from ugly people," Jace confided. "The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me." He winked at the girls, who giggled and hid behind their hair.
- Cassandra Clare

If you love someone, you're not supposed to want them to come back. Better a peaceful sleep in the earth than the life of a zombie--not really dead but not really alive, either.
- Cassandra Clare

The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me.
- Cassandra Clare

Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. "Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you."
Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. "Of course they are," he said. "I am stunningly attractive."
"Haven't you ever heard that modesty is an attractive trait?"
"Only from ugly people," Jace confided. "The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me.
- Cassandra Clare

I still can't say whether I ever want children....I can only say how I feel now--grateful to be on my own. I also know that I won't go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life; I don't think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies onto the earth.
- Elizabeth Gilbert

You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two...But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look thorough your heart, instead
- Elizabeth Gilbert

I also know that I won't go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life; I don't think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies onto the earth.
- Elizabeth Gilbert

To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.
- Elizabeth Gilbert

What though the sea with waves continuall
Doe eate the earth, it is no more at all ;
Ne is the earth the lesse, or loseth ought :
For whatsoever from one place doth fall
Is with the tyde unto another brought :
For there is nothing lost, that may be found if sought.
- Edmund Spenser

The dead do not need to rise. They are a part of the earth now and the earth can never be conquered. For the earth endureth forever. It will outlive all systems of tyranny. Those who have entered it honorably, and no men ever entered earth more honorably than those who died in Spain, already have achieved immortality.
- Ernest Hemingway

But did thee feel the earth move?
- Ernest Hemingway

Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.
- John Ruskin

The poor are always rich in children, and in the dirt and ditches of this street there are groups of them from morning to night, hungry, naked and dirty. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but these had the appearance of flowers that have faded prematurely, because they grew in ground where there was no healthy nourishment.
- Maxim Gorky

Absolute silence greeted the mystery of death, and for a time impossible to measure they waited, motionless, while Lynn's spirit rose from her body. Severo felt a long howl surging from the center of the earth and passing through his body to his lips, but it did not escape. The scream invaded him, filled him, and burst inside his head in a silent explosion.
Portrait in Sepia, Isabel Allende.
- Isabel Allende

Twenty-two astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state
that makes people want to flee the Earth?"
- Stephen Colbert to Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones,
"The Colbert Report," November 3, 2005
- Stephen Colbert

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." Sorry, Darwin-huggers, but it's not "In the beginning, a monkey evolutioned gay marriage.
- Stephen Colbert

Look at the earth and you think it's solid," he said. "But look deeper and you'll see it's riddled with tunnels. A warren. A labyrinth.
- David Almond

I have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he said he to me, 'Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?' I replied, 'Listen, I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.
- Alexandre Dumas

The friends that we have lost do not repose in the bosom of the earth, but are buried deep in our hearts, and it has been ordained that we may always be accompanied by them.
- Alexandre Dumas

A man is held to be criminal,sometimes, by the great ones of the earth,not because he has committed a crime himself but because he knows of one which has been committed.
- Alexandre Dumas

When you considered this world--people winched up and lowered down into the earth in steel cages and speed-fed through the tunnels, with doors cracking everywhere, and arctic winds mingling with dusty gaps of fire from the planet's core--it was hard to believe how delicate life was, how breakable things were.
- Martin Amis

It was the tiredness of time lived, with its days and days. It was the tiredness of gravity- gravity, which wants you down in the center of the earth.
- Martin Amis

If you look at it ecologically, deforestation is high on the list of things which bring devastation. You cut down trees to build homes, for fuel, and you end up with no trees left, and you have to move on. If you take the earth as a whole, eventually there's nowhere to move on to.
- Clive Anderson

When I do fall in love, I'll go to the ends of the earth for that person. I'd lay down on a carpet of nails for the person I love.
- Peter Andre

The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight.
- Larry Mcmurtry

It's like I told you last night son. The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight, he added
- Larry Mcmurtry

You weren't an accident. You weren't mass produced. You aren't an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the earth by the Master Craftsman.
- Max Lucado

The martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth.
- Frank Sinatra

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.
- Thomas Jefferson

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
- Thomas Jefferson

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.
- Thomas Jefferson

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
- Thomas Jefferson

Gebt mir einen festen Punkt auf dem ich stehen kann und ich werde die Welt aus den Angeln heben!"
"Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth!
- Archimedes

Give me somewhere to stand and I will move the earth.
- Archimedes

Give me a place to stand and rest my lever on, and I can move the Earth.
- Archimedes

Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.
- Archimedes

Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.
- Archimedes

The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.
- Hannah Arendt

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.
- Plato

But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.
- Plato

It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep...a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis.
- Lisa Kleypas

Love was the secret behind everything...love was what made vineyards grow and filled the spaces between the stars, and fixed the ground beneath his feet. It didn't matter if you acknowledged it or not. You couldn't stop the motion of the earth or hold back the ocean tides, or break the pull of the moon. You couldn't stop the rain or pull a shade over the sun.
- Lisa Kleypas

You could run to the farthest corners of the earth. There's no place you could go where I wouldn't love you. Nothing you could do to stop me.
- Lisa Kleypas

Rather than have it the principal thing in my son's mind, I would gladly have him think that the sun went round the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles set in the bright blue firmament.
- Thomas Arnold

The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness
- Yann Arthus Bertrand

I'd walk to the ends of the earth hand in hand with Chace Keaton and all he had to do to get me to do it was kiss me deep, smile at me, hold my hand and call me baby.
- Kristen Ashley

I didn't want to go back to sleep. I wanted to talk to him until the earth started revolving around the moon.
- Kristen Ashley

All the hundreds of millions of people who, in their time, believed the Earth was flat never succeeded in unrounding it by an inch.
- Isaac Asimov

Shamas stands in the open door and watches the earth, the magnet that it is, pulling snowflakes out of the sky towards itself.
- Nadeem Aslam

I would be very happy to see 3.5 billion humans wiped out from the face of the earth within the next 150 or 200 years and I am quite prepared to go myself with this majority... let us all look forward to the day when the catastrophe strikes us down!
- John Aspinall

To him the stars seemed like so many musical notes affixed to the sky, just waiting for somebody to unfasten them. Someday the sky would be emptied, but by then the earth would be a constellation of musical scores
- Machado De Assis

The whole of the hydrogen on the earth might be transformed at once and the success of the experiment published at large to the universe as a new star.
- Francis William Aston

The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.
- David Attenborough

I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing. Treacherous ground, my own territory. I become the earth I set my ear against, for rumors of the future.
- Margaret Atwood

I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toesthe splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life.
- Melina Marchetta

But round your image
there is no fog, and the Earth
can still astonish.
- W H Auden

Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.
- W H Auden

Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.
- Francis Bacon

Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The other third is covered with auditors from headquarters.
- Norman Ralph Augustine

If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off.
- Norman Ralph Augustine

I became hypnotized by my own loneliness, unwilling to stop until my eyes wouldn't stay open anymore, watching the white line of the highway as though it was the last thing that connected me to the earth.
- Paul Auster

The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?
- Natalie Babbitt

Zarathustra, however, answered thus unto him who so spake: When one taketh his hump from the hunchback, then doth one take from him his spiritso do the people teach. And when one giveth the blind man eyes, then doth he see too many bad things on the earth: so that he
curseth him who healed him. He, however, who maketh the lame man run, inflicteth upon him the greatest in him so do the people teach concerning cripples
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The "kingdom of Heaven" is a condition of the heart - not something that comes "upon the earth" or "after death."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing: - the soul wished the body lean, monstrous, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. But that soul was itself lean, monstrous, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of this soul! So my brothers, tell me: What does your body say about your soul? Is not your soul poverty and filth and miserable self-complacency?
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
- Friedrich Nietzsche

to be sure: except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into that kingdom of heaven [and Zarathustra pointed upward with his hands]. but we have no wish whatever to enter into the kingdom of heaven: we have become men so we want the earth.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

You stream almost too violently, fountain of delight! And often you empty the cup again, by wanting to fill it!
***
And if a friend does you wrong, then say: "I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to yourself, however-how could I forgive that!"
***
Sex: for free hearts, innocent and free, the garden happiness of the earth, an overflowing of thanks to the present from all the future.
***
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The bombs disrupted molecular structures. The cocktails included the distribution of nanotechnology to help to speed up the recovery of the earth - nanotechnology that promotes the self-assembly of molecules. The nanotechnology, speed up by DNA, which is an informational material but also excellent at the self-assembly of cells, made our fusing stronger. And the nanotechnology that hit the humans trapped in rubble or scorched land helped them to regenerate.
- Julianna Baggott

My life has been a continuous fulfillment of dreams. It appears that everything I saw and did has a new, and perhaps, more significant meaning, every time I see it. The earth is good. It is a privilege to live thereon.
- Liberty Hyde Bailey

No beast has ever conquered the earth; and the natural world has never been conquered by muscular force.
- Liberty Hyde Bailey

And then there is, of course, always, and inevitably, this spume of poetry that's just blowing out of the sulphurous flue-holes of the earth. Just masses of poetry. It's unstoppable, it's uncorkable. There's no way to make it end.
- Nicholson Baker

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
- James Baldwin

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
- James Baldwin

The world needs to see that this church, of all organizations on the face of the earth, honors women.
- M Russell Ballard

When everything is blocked off,' I was told by a dear friend who lives in Erfurt, one must try to live in the interstices.' Apparently, the Christians of the Apocalypse, though they did not bear the sign of the beast, had discovered or created such spaces. From islands like these, true culture, Christian culture, may spread across the earth. Many people are athirst for it.
- Hans Urs Von Balthasar

There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature... yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.
- Muriel Barbery

And I can't let you out of here until I know what your plans are. (Kat)
To stop the annihilation of mankind and the earth. It's a simple plan, really, but an important one. Can I go now? (Sin)
- Sherrilyn Kenyon

Why did you marry him then? (Francesca)
I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I thought he was a noble prince. I had no idea he was barely one step up from a monkey. I take that back and I deeply apologize to all the primates of the earth for insulting them. He's not worthy of monkeydom. He's a slimy slug trail. (Esperetta)
- Sherrilyn Kenyon

In every house, there was always one malcontent jealous prick out to destroy everyone else just for spite. The entire history of the earth was written in the blood of those betrayed by the very people they'd foolishly trusted. (Stryker)
- Sherrilyn Kenyon

There's always one,
isn't there? Stryker asked rhetorically. In every house, there was always
one malcontent jealous prick out to destroy everyone else just for spite. The
entire history of the earth was written in the blood of those betrayed by the
very people they'd foolishly trusted.
- Sherrilyn Kenyon

History needs to be mightily inventive about human life because bare life is an accusation against man's dominion of the earth.
- Sebastian Barry

When they came into their trench he felt small enough. The biggest thing there was the roaring of Death and the smallest thing was a man. Bombs not so far off distressed the earth of Belgium, disgorged great heaps of it, and did everything except kill him immediately, as he half expected them to do.
- Sebastian Barry

Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.
- Charles Baudelaire

Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.
If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.
Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.
- Charles Baudelaire

So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk.
- Charles Baudelaire

So as not to feel the terrible burden of TIme that breaks your shoulders and bends you towards the earth, you must get drunk without respite. But drunk on what? On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you like. but get drunk.
- Charles Baudelaire

In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!
- Charles Baudelaire

One must be drunk always. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that breaks your shoulders and bows you to the earth, you must intoxicate yourself unceasingly. But with what? With wine, poetry, or with virtue, your choice. But intoxicate yourself.
- Charles Baudelaire

I am a black stone, the size of a kitchen stove. They wash me in the stream every summer and sing over me. I am skulls and cocks, spring rain and the blood of the bull. Virgins lie with strangers in my name, the young priests throw pieces of themselves at my stone feet. I am white corn, and the wind in the corn, and the earth whereof the corn stands up, and the blind worms rolled in an oozy ball of love at the corn's roots. I am rut and flood and honeybees.
- Peter S Beagle

And without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one's liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.
- Simone De Beauvoir

The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.
- Samuel Beckett

I open the door of the cell and go. I am so bowed I only see my feet, if I open my eyes, and between my legs a little trail of black dust. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit.
- Samuel Beckett

I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.
(Pause. Krapp's lips move. No sound.)
Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.
- Samuel Beckett

What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground.
- Samuel Beckett

The little cloud drifting before their glorious sun will darken the earth as long as I please.
- Samuel Beckett

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.
- Samuel Beckett

A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.
- Clive Bell

Imagine you are the Earth and he is the Sun, that silence is tangible, and the stars are the souls of your previous lives.
- Jessica Bell

If the bards of old the true has told
The sirens have raven hair.
But over the earth since art had birth,
They paint the angels fair.
- L M Montgomery

If you could have confidence in nature you would not have to fear. It would keep you up. Creative is nature. Rapid. Lavish. Inspirational. It shapes leaves. It rolls the waters of the earth. Man is the chief of this. All creations are his just inheritance. You don't know what you've got within you. A person either creates or he destroys. There is no neutrality.
- Saul Bellow

The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. It is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit's ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.
- Saul Bellow

The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.
- Saul Bellow

God owns heaven but He craves the earth.
- Anne Sexton

It occurs to me that just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans being in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.
- John Steinbeck

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
- John Steinbeck

the surface of the earth crusted. a thin hard crust,and as the sky became pale,so the earth became pale, pink in the red contry and white in the gray contry. (1) this describes the form of the book how the earth has been swallowed by the sun and allows you to assume that the farms are destroded
- John Steinbeck

And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
- John Steinbeck

Today we bury his remains in the earth as a seed of immortality. Our hearts are full of sadness, yet at the same time of joyful hope and profound gratitude.
- Joseph Ratzinger

Listen to the voice of the earth..
- Pope Benedict Xvi

Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.
- Walter Benjamin

The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell.
- Jeremy Bentham

For all it's problems and difficulties, life is mostly a wonderful experience, and it is up to each person to make the most of each day. I hope you are successful in your life, but look to the heavens and the earth and especially to other people to find your real wealth. Wherever I am, wherever you go, know that my love goes with you.
- Elizabeth Berg

The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.
- John Berger

When he painted a road, the roadmakers were there in his imagination, when he painted the turned earth of a ploughed field, the gesture of the blade turning the earth was included in his own act. Whenever he looked he saw the labour of existence; and this labour, recognised as such, was what constituted reality for him. (On Vincent Van Gogh)
- John Berger

I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.
- Haruki Murakami

Listen, every object's in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil--they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.
- Haruki Murakami

The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.
- Haruki Murakami

The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those details of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them.
- Haruki Murakami

Strange and mysterious things, though, aren't they - earthquakes? We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary. We even talk about people being 'down to earth' or having their feet firmly planted on the ground. But suddenly one day we see that it isn't true. The earth, the boulders, that are supposed to be solid, all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid - From the short story Thailand
- Haruki Murakami

Do you know what 'Sputnik' means in Russian? 'Travelling companion'. I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It's just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the Earth.
- Haruki Murakami

Dawn in Mongolia was an amazing thing. In one instant, the horizon became a faint line suspended in the darkness, and then the line was drawn upward, higher and higher. It was as if a giant hand had stretched down from the sky and slowly lifted the curtain of night from the face of the earth. It was a magnificent sight, far greater in scale...than anything that I, with my limited human faculties, could fully comprehend.
- Haruki Murakami

Or more accurately, since we were in the plane, our shadows figured as well inside the shadow of the airplane skimming over mountain and field. Which would mean we too were imprinted into the earth.
- Haruki Murakami

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this word, all of them, yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the Earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
- Haruki Murakami

What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get into the habit of thinking, This is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to forget all that. Don't you agree? Two-thirds of the earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see of it with the naked eye is the surface: the skin. We hardly know anything about what's underneath the skin.
- Haruki Murakami

Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
- Haruki Murakami

I want to write stories different from the ones I've written so far, Junpei thought: I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. But right now I have to stay here and keep watch over this women and this girl. I will never let anyone - not anyone - try to put them into that crazy box - not even if the sky should fall or the earth crack open with a roar.
- Haruki Murakami

The silence grew deeper, so deep that if you listened carefully you might very well catch the sound of the earth revolving on its axis.
- Haruki Murakami

I want to write stories that are different from the ones I've written so far, Junpei thought: I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. But right now I have to stay here and keep watch over this woman and this girl. I will never let anyone-not anyone-try to put them into that crazy box- not even if the sky should fall or the earth crack open with a roar.
- Haruki Murakami

I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.
- Haruki Murakami

That is why it is necessary for you to fasten your feelings to the earthfirmly, like attaching an anchor to a balloon.
- Haruki Murakami

I stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years from now. In a hundred years everybody here-me included-will have disappeared from the face of the earth and turned into ashes or dust. A weird thought, but everything in front of me starts to seem unreal, like a gust of wind could blow it all away.
- Haruki Murakami

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.
- Haruki Murakami

The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring - and all of the acts carried out - on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories.
- Haruki Murakami

The sky was painted over, a perfect uniform gray. On days like this the clouds probably absorbed the sounds from the surface of the earth. And not just sounds. All kinds of things. Perceptions, for example.
- Haruki Murakami

Thanks to the long days of rain, the blades of grass glowed with a deep-green luster, and they gave off the smell of wildness unique to things that sink their roots into the earth.
- Haruki Murakami

The arms race is worse than it ever was, the dumping of creation down a military rat hole is worse than it ever was, the wars across the earth are worse than they ever were.
- Daniel Berrigan

We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsible within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone. (pg. 134, The Body and the Earth)
- Wendell Berry

In a time of disorder [Laertes] has returned to the care of the earth, the foundation of life and hope. And Odysseus finds him in an act emblematic of the best and most responsible kind of agriculture: an old man caring for a young tree. (pg. 123, The Body and the Earth)
- Wendell Berry

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
- Wendell Berry

Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.
(pg.99, "The Body and the Earth")
- Wendell Berry

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.
- Wendell Berry

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
- Henry Beston

Do no dishonour to the earth least you dishonour the spirit of man.
- Henry Beston

The [wild animal:] shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and the travail of the Earth.
- Henry Beston

The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and june these elemental presences lived and had their being..
- Henry Beston

For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.
- Henry Beston

The seas are the heart's blood of the earth.
- Henry Beston

The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.
- Henry Beston

Human looks sure on face,
while the earth lost in space.
- Toba Beta

Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.
- Ambrose Bierce

Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong for ever,' she said. 'This craze for motion has only set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by a civilization that won't be a movement, because it will rest on the earth. All the signs are against it now, but I can't help hoping.
- E M Forster

We are reverting to the civilization of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty.
- E M Forster