Earth Quotes - 5
|
It takes an earthquake to remind us that we walk on the crust of an unfinished earth.
|
More Earth Quotes
I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.
edward abbey— "The First Morning", p. 7
Then a Voice said: "Behold this day, for it is yours to make. Now you shall stand upon the center of the earth to see, for there they are taking you."
black elk— Describing a childhood vision he had while very ill and near death.
The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!
brougham, henry, 1st baron brougham and vaux— Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895, pg. 274).
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors.
Stephen Crane— Ch. 1 First lines.
How on earth are the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England, commending the 'Hard ECU' as they strive to, to be taken as serious participants in the debate against that kind of background noise? I believe that both the Chancellor and the Governor are cricketing enthusiasts, so I hope that there is no monopoly of cricketing metaphors. It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.
geoffrey howe— Hansard, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 180 col. 464.
— Personal statement in the House of Commons on his resignation, 13 November 1990.
It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back to so many different parts of the earth and to conditions of such diverse kinds, the variations of text are so entirely questions of detail, not of essential substance.
frederic g. kenyon— Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 136
I owned the world that hour as I rode over it... free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds, but how inseparably I was bound to them.
charles lindbergh— On flying over the Rocky Mountains, as quoted in Lindbergh (1978) by Leonard Mosley
Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the earth will always find themselves born by a current towards the open seas.
pierre teilhard de chardin— The Divinisation of Our Activities, p. 72
A point of great importance would be first to know: what is the capacity of the earth? And what charge does it contain if electrified? Though we have no positive evidence of a charged body existing in space without other oppositely electrified bodies being near, there is a fair probability that the earth is such a body, for by whatever process it was separated from other bodies — and this is the accepted view of its origin — it must have retained a charge, as occurs in all processes of mechanical separation.
nikola tesla— "Experiments With Alternating Currents of Very High Frequency, and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination" (20 May 1891)
There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.
— G. K. Chesterton, in "A Defence of Baby-Worship" in The Defendant (1901)
The result of [the] cumulative efforts to investigate the cell to investigate life at the molecular level is a loud, clear, piercing cry of ‘design!’ The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun.
michael behe— p. 232-233
If the resident zoologist of Galaxy X had visited the earth 5 million years ago while making his inventory of inhabited planets in the universe, he would surely have corrected his earlier report that apes showed more promise than Old World monkeys and noted that monkeys had overcome an original disadvantage to gain domination among primates. (He will confirm this statement after his visit next year but also add a footnote that one species from the ape bush has enjoyed an unusual and unexpected flowering, thus demanding closer monitoring.)
stephen jay gould— "The Declining Empire of Apes", p. 288
And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, grasping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.
james russell lowell— Prelude to Pt. I, st. 5.
Odin, thou whirlwind, what a threat is this Thou threatenest what transcends thy might, even thine, For of all powers the mightiest far art thou, Lord over men on earth, and Gods in Heaven; Yet even from thee thyself hath been withheld One thing to undo what thou thyself hast ruled.
Matthew Arnold— Matthew Arnold, Balder Dead, The Funeral
Might I but through my prison once a day Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth Let liberty make use of; space enough Have I in such a prison.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-1612), I:2, Ferdinand
I settled at Cold Mountain long ago Already it seems like ages Wandering free I roam the woods and streams Lingering to watch things be themselves Men don’t come this far into the mountains Where white clouds gather and billow Dry grass makes a comfortable mattress The blue sky is a fine quilt Happy to pillow my head on the rock I leave heaven and earth to endless change
— Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry by the t'ang zen poet han-shan (2005, 2011), tr. Wandering Poet, ISBN 978-0-6151-6006-1 ISBN 0615160069 LOC Number 2007937840
Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on earth tolerable.
nick hornby— Songbook (2003)
The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
— Thomas De Quincey, "Coleridge and Opium-Eating" (1845), in Coleridge and Opium-Eating and Other Writings (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1862), footnote on p. 85
That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.
— Psalm 83:18
'Tis rushing now adown the spout, And gushing out below, Half frantic in its joyousness, And wild in eager flow. The earth is dried and parched with heat, And it hath long'd to be Released from out the selfish cloud, To cool the thirsty tree.
— Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Water.
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— The Belfry of Bruges, Stanza 9.
Even heavy automobile traffic out of New York City on a summer weekend minutely unbalances the earth as it rotates.
— Paul Allman Siple, in 90° South : The Story of the American South Pole Conquest (1959), p. 279
If you knew this was your last day on earth, how would you want to spend it?
Meredith Grey— Played by Ellen Pompeo on ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" (Season 2, Episode 17)
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, Behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.
william shakespeare— Lysander, scene i
earth was once molten rock, and now it makes spaceships.
brian swimme— Found on Pilgrimage to NASA's Apollo Flight Center write up by Connie Barlow, a fellow in Evolutionary Spirituality
With whisper of her mellowing grain, With treble of brook and bud and tree, earth joys for ever to sustain The bass eternal of the sea.
roden noel— "Beatrice", in Beatrice, and other Poems (1868).
"If I am a fool then it is no misfortune, for then only one more fool will wander this earth. Amongst the millions of mentally deranged it would barely be noticed. But what if I am not a fool, and that science itself has erred? Then the tragedy is incalculable!"
viktor schauberger— Implosion Magazine, No. 51, p. 29 (Callum Coats: Water Wizard)
"We must look into unknown dimensions, into Nature, into that incalculable and imponderable life, whose carrier and mediator, the blood of the earth that accompanies us steadfastly from the cradle to the grave, is water."
viktor schauberger— Implosion Magazine, No. 103, p. 28 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
