Quotes about earth (4972 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Happy , Friendship , For Friend , For Bestfriend

“Reading is the greatest thing ever, I've read alot that I know what very few people know… That the stars in the night sky are suns and that there are earth-like planets orbiting those stars, meaning there are other planets like earth out there… Reading is great”

Cornelius Keagon (1996) Liberian humanitarian aid worker

Star , People , Night , Reading

“I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Wise , Deep , Inspirational , Life

“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

For Wife , Love , Beauty , Cooking

“Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail. We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on Earth to rule all of humanity.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Men , Food , Fight

“Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg

Love , Life , World , Religion

“But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Love , Water

“It’s always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you’re seeing the most beautiful thing on God’s Earth.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

God , Beauty , Joy , Making love

“Ere long intelligence—transmitted without wires—will throb through the earth like a pulse through a living organism. The wonder is that, with the present state of knowledge and the experiences gained, no attempt is being made to disturb the electrostatic or magnetic condition of the earth, and transmit, if nothing else, intelligence.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Electrical Engineer, (24 Jun 1892), 11‎, 609.

Intelligence , Knowledge

“Did you ever stop to notice
All the children dead from war?
Did you ever stop to notice
This crying earth, these weeping shores?”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Earth Song
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)

War , Children , Cry , Dead

“I consider all the prophets to be my brothers in the faith. All the conquerors are also my brothers in the introduction of civilisation on Earth.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Faith

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Life , Death , Lie , Peace

“Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;
Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.”

Thomas Moore Come

Come, ye Disconsolate.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart

“Music is something everyone on Earth can share. Music is meant to heal us, to bring us together, to make us happy.”

Ariana Grande (1993) American singer-songwriter

Twitter statement on the Manchester terrorist attack https://twitter.com/ArianaGrande/status/868164986887176192 (26 May 2017)

Music , Happiness

“After knowing that the sun neither sets nor rises except for our imaginations and the limitations of our planet Earth, there can be no more mood swings in the heart and mind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Imagination , Sun , Heart , Mood

“We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. 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 (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House, 1928, p. 25: Ch 2
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Context: We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they moved 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.

Life , Fate , World , Sense

“What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife… Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment…”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)
Context: While I have not lost faith in its potentialities, my views have changed since. War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only though annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride, which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife. No league or parliamentary act of any kind will ever prevent such a calamity. These are only new devices for putting the weak at the mercy of the strong.

World , Peace , Communication , Understanding

“Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Universe

“Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that have received--only what you have given.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

“Rape is one of the most terrible crimes on earth. And it happens every few minutes.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in New Musical Express (1991-11-23).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

“I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.”

Ptolemy book Almagest

In some of the manuscripts, the books begins with this epigram (Owen Gingerich, The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, American Institute of Physics, 1993, p. 55).
Almagest

Pleasure , Nature

“In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech to the Reichstag, 30 January 1939, as quoted at The History Place http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/threat.htm.
1930s

Life , War , World , Problem

“Behold, my brothers, the spring has come; the earth has received the embraces of the sun and we shall soon see the results of that love! Every seed has awakened and so has all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5712889.Sitting_Bull
Attributed quotes

Sun , Spring , Animals , Love

“You are the only person on earth who can use your ability.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Personality

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)
Context: And truly, I reiterate,.. nothing's small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And, — glancing on my own thin, veined wrist, —
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.

Bk. VII, l. 812-826.

God , Shoe

“You have one business on earth – to save souls.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Soul , Business

“The divine is not something high above us. It is in heaven, it is in earth, it is inside us”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

Freedom

“There is a place, like no place on earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger. Some say, to survive it, you need to be as mad as a hatter. Which, luckily, I am.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Madness

“Do not count the days, do not count the miles. Count only the Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill.”

Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967) Russian-Soviet writer and poet

Children , Cry

“Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

God , Fear , Hell

“Nothing on earth can make up for the loss of one who has loved you.”

Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) Swedish female writer

Love , Loss

“It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth -- and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up -- that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Deep , Way , Understanding , Time

“They say there is a judgement day. I don't think judgement day comes when we are dead. The judgement day is today, the judgement day is now. And it is going to allow you to live a life of hell now; Or to choose your own kingdom, To live Heaven on earth now. Live dangerously until you die.”

Rich Piana (1970–2017) American bodybuilder and internet personality

Life , Hell , Thinking , Dead

“To Love is to reach God.
Never will a Lover's chest
feel any sorrow.
Never will a Lover's robe
be touched by mortals.
Never will a Lover's body
be found buried in the earth.
To Love is to reach God.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)

Love , God , Feeling , Lovers

“When anything is blocking my head or there's worry in my life, I just go sit on Mars or something and look back here at Earth. All you can see is this tiny speck. You don't see the fear. You don't see the pain. You don't see thought. It's just one solid speck. Then nothing really matters. It just doesn't.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

As quoted in an interview in Vanity Fair (August 2000).

Life , Pain , Fear

“For the faults of the many, judge not the whole. Everything on earth is of mixed character, like a mingling of sand and sugar. Be like the wise ant which seizes only the sugar, and leaves the sand untouched.”

Mahavatar Babaji Hindu Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), Ch. 36 : Babaji's Interest in the West

“Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, 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 book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Sad , People , World , Loneliness

“Peace on earth will come to stay, When we live Christmas every day.”

Helen Steiner Rice (1900–1981) American poet

Christmas , Peace , Christmas

“Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: Fireflies

Effort , Tree

“many pass for saints on earth whose souls are in hell.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Bondage of the Will

Soul , Hell

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

This quotation was first used in print (and misattributed to Leonardo da Vinci) in a science fiction story published in 1975, The Storms of Windhaven. One of the authors, Lisa Tuttle, remembers that the quote was suggested by science fiction writer Ben Bova, who says he believes he got the quote from a TV documentary narrated by Fredric March, presumably I, Leonardo da Vinci, written by John H. Secondari for the series Saga of Western Man, which aired on 23 February 1965. Bova incorrectly assumed that he was quoting da Vinci. The probable author is John Hermes Secondari (1919-1975), American author and television producer.
Misattributed
Variant: For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

“The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

“I am part of the sun as my eye is of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Apocalypse (1930)
Context: What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.

Sun , Parting , Sea

“If I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder.. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding onto whatever scraps she had left.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Stupidity , World , Way , Star

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Death , World , Way

“For nature forms our spirits to receive
Each bent that outward circumstance can give:
She kindles pleasure, bids resentment glow,
Or bows the soul to earth in hopeless woe.”
Format enim Natura prius nos intus ad omnem Fortunarum habitum, juvat, aut impellit ad iram, Aut ad humum moerore gravi deducit, et angit.

Horace Ars Poetica

Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 108 (tr. Conington)

Pleasure , Soul , Nature

“I made public the resolution to abstain from wine, which had been hidden in the treasury of my breast The victorious servants, in accordance with the illustrious order, dashed upon the earth of contempt and destruction the flagons and the cups, and the other utensils in gold and silver, which in their number and their brilliance were like the stars of the firmament They dashed them in pieces, as, God willing! soon will be dashed the gods of the idolaters, - and they distributed the fragments among the poor and needy.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, pp. 554-5. https://archive.org/stream/baburnama017152mbp#page/n623/mode/2up/search/dashed Also cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources

God , Star , Wine , Victory

“So much is happening on earth that cannot be fixed or explained, but it can be felt and suffered. I think a Christian is one who, along with Jesus, agrees to feel, to suffer the pain of the world.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 129

Pain , World , Feeling , Thinking

“The love of possessions is a disease in them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not! They have a religion in which the poor worship, but the rich will not! They even take tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbor away. … If America had been twice the size it is, there still would not have been enough.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Sitting Bull: The Collected Speeches, p. 75
Sourced quotes

Love , People , Disease , Religion

“As a fraction of the lifespan of the universe as measured from the beginning to the evaporation of the last black hole, life as we know it is only possible for one-thousandth of a billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, of a percent (10^-84). And that's why, for me, the most astonishing wonder of the universe isn't a star or a planet or a galaxy. It isn't a thing at all. It's an instant in time. And that time is now. Humans have walked the earth for just the shortest fraction of that briefest of moments in deep time. But in our 200,000 years on this planet we've made remarkable progress. It was only 2,500 years ago that we believed that the sun was a god and measured its orbit with stone towers built on the top of a hill. Today the language of curiosity is not sun gods, but science. And we have observatories that are almost infinitely more sophisticated than those towers, that can gaze out deep into the universe. And perhaps even more remarkably through theoretical physics and mathematics we can calculate what the universe will look like in the distant future. And we can even make concrete predictions about its end. And I believe that it's only by continuing our exploration of the cosmos and the laws of nature that govern it that we can truly understand ourselves and our place in this universe of wonders.”

Brian Cox (physicist) (1968) English physicist and former musician

Conclusion in Wonders of the Universe - Destiny

Life , God , Law , Star

“The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts:
Those with brains, but no religion,
And those with religion, but no brains.”

Al-Maʿarri (973–1057) Medieval Arab philosopher

As quoted in The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1984) by Amin Maalouf, p. 37
Variant translations:
The world holds two classes of men; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern (1906) by John Mackinnon Robertson, Vol. I, Ch. VIII: Freethought under Islam, p. 269
The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.
This form of the statement has been most commonly misatributted — to Avicenna, in A Rationalist Encyclopaedia: A Book of Reference on Religion, Philosophy, Ethics, and Science (1950) by Joseph McCabe, p. 43, and later to Averroes, in The Atheist World‎ (1991) by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, p. 46.
Original: اِثْنَانِ أَهْلُ الْأَرْضِ ذُو عَقْلٍ بِلَا دِينٍ وَآخَرُ دَيِّنٌ لَا عَقْلَ لَهُ

Religion

“Thank you, dear God
For putting me on this Earth
I feel very privileged
In debt for my thirst”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Downer
Song lyrics, Bleach (1989)

God , Feeling

“'A'isha, Umm al-Mu'minin, Umm 'Abdullah said, "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, 'An army will invade the Ka'ba. When they are at Bayda', the earth will swallow them up from the first to the last of them.'" She said, "I said, 'Messenger of Allah, how will it swallow them up from the first to the last of them when their traders are among them as well as others who are not really part of them?' He said, 'It will swallow them up from the first to the last of them and then they will resurrected according to their intentions.'"”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 2
Sunni Hadith

Peace , Parting

“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,"You owe me."Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”

Hafez (1326–1389) Persian poet

From Daniel Ladinsky, The Gift: Poems by Hafiz https://books.google.com/books?id=_cdWZkYE_ZQC (1999), p. 34. This is not a translation or interpretation of any poem by Hafez; http://www.payvand.com/news/09/apr/1266.html it is an original poem by Ladinsky inspired by the spirit of Hafez in a dream.
Misattributed

Love , Light , Time , Sun

“But Jehovah’s day will come as a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar, but the elements being intensely hot will be dissolved, and earth and the works in it will be exposed.”

Saint Peter (-1–67 BC) apostle and first pope

2 Peter 3:10 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/2-peter/3/, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
Second Epistle of Peter

“No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.”

Billie Holiday book Lady Sings the Blues

Source: Lady Sings the Blues (1956), Ch. 4.

People , Music , Way

“It is time, love, to break off that sombre rose,
shut up the stars and bury the ash in the earth;
and, in the rising of the light, wake with those who awoke
or go on in the dream, reaching the other shore of the sea which has no other shore.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Es la hora, amor mío, de apartar esta rosa sombría,
cerrar las estrellas, enterrar la ceniza en la tierra:
y, en la insurrección de la luz, despertar con los que despertaron
o seguir en el sueño alcanzando la otra orilla del mar que no tiene otra orilla.
La Barcarola Termina (The Watersong Ends) (1967), trans. Anthony Kerrigan in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 500).

Love , Dreams , Star , Light

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Children , Hope

“We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), First Inaugural address (1981)
Context: We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.
It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.
Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

People , Way

“Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), First Inaugural address (1981)
Context: If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.

Freedom , Time

“Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse life. Live in to-day. Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it, do not sully it, do not hinder it from coming to flower. Love it even when it is gray and sad like to-day. Do not be anxious. See. It is winter now. Everything is asleep. The good earth will awake again. You have only to be good and patient like the earth. Be reverent. Wait. If you are good, all will go well. If you are not, if you are weak, if you do not succeed, well, you must be happy in that. No doubt it is the best you can do. So, then, why will? Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do what we can.... Als ich kann.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Gottfried to Jean-Christophe. Part 3: Ada
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Youth (1904)

Waiting , Making love , Bad luck , Flowers

“They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. That nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5712889.Sitting_Bull
Attributed quotes

Spring

“I'm looking for the face i had before the world was made. I was the primordial flaring forth, the gravitational waves, the whirling galaxies, and the exploding supernovas that would become stars and planets. I was the steaming planet Earth, the bacteria awash in the sea, and the early eukaryotes and multicellular animals. I exploded in the Cambrian explosion, stumbled onto land, walked with dinosaurs, saw trees and flowers appear, walked upright in Africa, and walked on the moon. I felt the embrace of gravity. I was one with all that had been and all that was to be. I experienced subjective mystical communion with the evolutionary, emergent universe. I was the universe. We know not where the journey leads, nor whether a final destination is even a meaningful concept. The attraction is the inherent thrill of participating in a grand creative endeavor for which participation is its own reward”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14108295.alexis_karpouzos

Tree , Star , Animals , Flowers

“I dream that one day
we will look at each other
in the same way we look at the sun,
and we will touch each other
like the sun on earth,
and the blessings of light
will flow into our hearts.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos?page=2

Sun , Light , Dreams , Heart

“All humans on earth are one. We descend from the same family of common ancestors. We are, in a quite literal sense, siblings, and like siblings we depend on each other's love and care and responsibility. We are interdependent not just in our families and communities, but in nations, and increasingly on a global scale - just as we are also interdependent with nature and the earth.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos?page=2

Family , Dependency , Communication , Nature

“The sun does not rise from East, nor set to West; it is all inside our minds and within the limits of our planet Earth.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Sun

“The greatest miracle of our generation is to be born on Earth and buried on another planet.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.”

Louise Erdrich (1954) writer from the United States

Source: Tales of Burning Love

Love , People , World , Way

“Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Source: What Is Life?

Family , Tree , Change

“There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Democracy , Wealth

“The day of resurrection is determined in this manner. The first Sunday after the full moon in Aries is celebrated as Easter. Aries begins on the 21st day of March and ends approximately on the 19th day of April. The sun’s entry into Aries marks the beginning of Spring The moon in its monthly transit around the earth will form sometime between March 21st and April 25th an opposition to the sun, which opposition is called a full moon, The first Sunday after this phenomenon of the heavens occurs Is celebrated as Easter; the Friday preceding this day is observed as Good Friday. This movable date should tell the observant one to look for some interpretation other than the one commonly accepted. These days do not mark the anniversaries of the death and resurrection of an individual who lived on earth.”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer

Source: Your Faith is Your Fortune

Death , Spring , Sun

“I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I can not find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XVI).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe; I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I can not find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!

Life , God , Soul , Madness

“If you are doing the right thing for the earth, she's giving you great company.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

“We are bound, you and I, and nothing on this earth shall part me from you.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Parting

“So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”

George Orwell Why I Write

Source: "Why I Write" http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/write.html, Gangrel (Summer 1946)
Context: Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness.

Love , Pleasure , Feeling

“By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Dreams , Heart

“The poetry of earth is never dead.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

" Sonnet. On the Grasshopper and the Cricket http://www.bartleby.com/126/28.html"
Poems (1817)

Dead

“Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,
our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.”

Homér Iliad

XVIII. 130–131 (tr. Robert Fagles). Cf. Iliad, XVII. 446–447.
Samuel Butler's translation:
: Man is the vainest of all creatures that have their being upon earth.
Robert Fitzgerald's translation:
: Of mortal creatures, all that breathe and move,
earth bears none frailer than mankind.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Variant: Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.
Source: The Iliad

“We have seen many rich persons, many powerful persons, many famous persons, many beautiful persons, many learned and scholarly persons, and persons in the renounced order of life unattached to material possessions. But we have never seen any one person who is unlimitedly and simultaneously wealthy, powerful, famous, beautiful, wise and unattached, like Kṛṣṇa, in the history of humanity. Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is a historical person who appeared on this earth 5,000 years ago. He stayed on this earth for 125 years and played exactly like a human being, but His activities were unparalleled. From the very moment of His appearance to the moment of His disappearance, every one of His activities is unparalleled in the history of the world, and therefore anyone who knows what we mean by Godhead will accept Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. No one is equal to the Godhead, and no one is greater than Him. That is the import of the familiar saying “God is great.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Source: Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead

Life , God , World , Beauty

“A map says to you.
Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not…
I am the earth in the palm of your hand.”

Beryl Markham (1902–1986) British writer, aviator, adventurer, racehorse trainer

Reading

“Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. …Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute?”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

"Emily Webb"
Our Town (1938)
Context: I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back — up the hill — to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.... Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute?... I'm ready to go back... I should have listened to you. That's all human beings are! Just blind people.

Life

“Fire wants to burn
Water wants to flow
Air wants to rise
Earth wants to bind
Chaos wants to devour
Cal wants to live”

Cassandra Clare book The Iron Trial

Source: The Iron Trial

Water

“There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Women , Men , Silence , Season

“Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase in pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Pain

“Wherever a heart beats with love, wherever Faith and Reason utter their oracles, there is God, as formerly in the hearts of seers and prophets. No soil on earth is so holy as the good man’s heart.”

Albert Pike (1809–1891) Confederate States Army general and Freemason

Love , God , Faith , Heart

“The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

134
Source: Stray Birds (1916)

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”

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

Source: The Sense of Wonder (1965)
Context: Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

Beauty , Hope , Peaceful , Life

“Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution

Life

“And then many things became very clear… we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Life , Learning , Time

“What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?”

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) Russian author primarily known for his novel "Master and Margarita"

Evil

“Of all I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man's life upon this earth — and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

Life , Wisdom , Truth , Books

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, born 1588

Life , Death , Men , War

“I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Source: The Dance of the Soul

Love , Life , Death , Men

“The earth was all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Source: The Prelude

Way , Heart

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

Oscar Wilde book The Canterville Ghost

Source: The Canterville Ghost http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/savile/canterville.c1.html (1887)

Life , Death , Lie , Peace

“[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Life , Intelligence , Universe

“What is the point of being on this Earth if you are going to be like everyone else?”

Arnold Schwarzenegger book Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

Source: Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Statement in 1965, in reference to Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963) by Buckminster Fuller, as quoted Paradigms Lost: Learning from Environmental Mistakes, Mishaps and Misdeeds (2005) by Daniel A. Vallero, p. 367
1960s

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet