The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
The waters deluge man with rain, oppress him with hail, and drown him with inundations; the air rushes in storms, prepares the tempest, or lights up the volcano; but the earth, gentle and indulgent, ever subservient to the wants of man, spreads his walks with flowers, and his table with plenty; returns, with interest, every good committed to her care; and though she produces the poison, she still supplies the antidote; though constantly teased more to furnish the luxuries of man than his necessities, yet even to the last she continues her kind indulgence, and, when life is over, she piously covers his remains in her bosom.
—Pliny the Elder (23–79CE) Roman Statesman, Scholar
What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.
—Norman Cousins (1912–1990) American Political Journalist
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
There is enough in the world for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.
—Frank Buchman (1878–1961) American Evangelist
God gives us dreams a size too big so that we can grow in them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The best investment on earth is earth.
—Louis J. Glickman (1905–99) American Real Estate Investor
The earth is what we all have in common.
—Wendell Berry (b.1934) American Poet, Novelist, Environmentalist
There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) American Military Leader
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
The earth’s a stage which God and nature do with actors fill.
—Thomas Heywood (1570–1641) English Dramatist, Actor
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.
—Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American Civil Liberties Lawyer
Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English Novelist, Poet
When your heart becomes the grave of your secrets, that desire of yours will be gained more quickly. The prophet said that anyone who keeps secret his inmost thought will soon attain the object of his desire. When seeds are buried in the earth, their inward secrets become the flourishing garden.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
—Rachel Carson (1907–64) American Naturalist, Science Writer
Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.
—Bill Cosby (b.1937) American Actor, Comedian, Activist, Producer, Author
The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.
—Norman Cousins (1912–1990) American Political Journalist
I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
—Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
A teacher of fear can’t bring peace on earth. We have been trying to do it that way for thousands of years. The person who turns inner violence around, the person who finds peace inside and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is. We are waiting for just one teacher. You’re the one.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
—W. W. Ziege
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 (b.1955) American Author, Minister, Speaker
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, And to love life through labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-American Philosopher, Poet, Sculptor
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
The earth, that is nature’s mother, is her tomb.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.
—Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American Educationist
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
—John Burroughs (1837–1921) American Naturalist, Writer
I thought how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes, barrens, wilds. It still dwarfs, terrifies, crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens, orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American Poet
We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on it’s vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed, for our safety, to it’s security and peace. Preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft.
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–65) American Diplomat, Politician, Orator
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