“We are the earth his word must sow like wheat
And, if it finds no earth, it cannot grow.
We are his earth, the mortal and the dying,
Led by no star — the sullen and the slut,
The thief, the selfish man, the barren woman,
Who have betrayed him once and will betray him,
Forget his words, be great a moment's space
Under the strokes of chance,
And then sink back into our small affairs.
And yet, unless we go, his message fails.”

— Stephen Vincent Benét

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

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Stephen Vincent Benét 102

poet, short story writer, novelist 1898–1943

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“We are the earth his word must sow like wheat
And, if it finds no earth, it cannot grow.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Innkeeper's wife
A Child is Born (1942)
Context: We are the earth his word must sow like wheat
And, if it finds no earth, it cannot grow.
We are his earth, the mortal and the dying,
Led by no star — the sullen and the slut,
The thief, the selfish man, the barren woman,
Who have betrayed him once and will betray him,
Forget his words, be great a moment's space
Under the strokes of chance,
And then sink back into our small affairs.
And yet, unless we go, his message fails.

“So remember, we have to find God, that person who is perfect; He is ours and we are His, and we have to find Him … So remember: we are part of Him who has manifested Himself as a Guru and who has come into this earth, and now we have to be one with Him. We have to completely merge and make our souls one with Him because He is perfect, and once we merge with Him we will also be perfect … So if you go to Him, ask. Ask and it shall be given, knock and it shall be opened unto you.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Prem Nagar Ashram, India, 10 December 1971 - quoted on p256 of "Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?" published by Bantam, 1973
1970s

“To ascertain the Lord's will we ought to use scriptural means. Prayer, the word of God, and His Spirit should be united together. We should go to the Lord repeatedly in prayer, and ask Him to teach us by His Spirit through His word. I say, by His Spirit through His word. For if we should think that His Spirit led us to do so and so, because certain facts are so and so, and yet His word is opposed to the step which we are going to take, we should be deceiving ourselves.”

George Müller (1805–1898) German-English clergyman

A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, First Part.
First Part of Narrative

“A man who sells his conscience for his interest will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country will betray his friend.”

Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) Irish writer

Vivian, ch. 7; Tales and Novels, vol. 8, p. 80.

“Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters "U. S.", let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: https://frederickdouglass.infoset.io/islandora/object/islandora%3A2333 "Negroes and the National War Effort"]

speech in Philadelphia (6 July 1863): Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? (1863)

“They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.”

Joseph Conrad book Under Western Eyes

Pt. I, ch. 2
Under Western Eyes (1911)

“We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective. Perhaps if we reversed the telescope and looked at man down these long vistas, we should find less time and inclination to plan for our own destruction.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952); also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 91

“Hither came Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.”

Robert E. Howard The Complete Chronicles of Conan

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)
Source: The Complete Chronicles of Conan

“Let each look to his own heart: let him not keep hatred against his brother for any hard word; on account of earthly contention let him not become earth.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

First Homily, Paragraph 11, as translated by H. Browne, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7 (1888)
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John (414)

“Other children had fathers and mothers and honored them, and they prospered and lived to a ripe old age; but he was often bitter towards his father and mother and dishonored them in his heart. His mother had cuckolded his father, and his father had betrayed his mother, and both of them had betrayed the boy. The only consolation was that he had a Father in heaven. And yet—it would have been better to have a father on earth.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

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