Quotes about earth
page 35

“[A]ssuming that the observable universe is void of extraterrestrial civilizations, then what hangs in the balance is at least 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 human lives (though the true number is probably larger). If we represent all the happiness experienced during one entire such life with a single teardrop of joy, then the happiness of these souls could fill and refill the Earth’s oceans every second, and keep doing so for a hundred billion billion millennia. It is really important that we make sure these truly are tears of joy.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 6

Life, Soul, Tear, Universe

“O ye who are invested with the Bayán! Regard not yourselves as being like unto the people to whom the Qur’án or the Gospel or other Scriptures of old were given, since at the time of His manifestation ye shall stray farther from God than did they. If ye happen to shut yourselves out it would never cross your minds that ye were shut out from Him. It behooveth you to consider how the people unto whom the Qur’án was given were debarred from the Truth, for indeed ye will act in a like manner, thinking that ye are doers of good. If ye perceive the degree of your deprivation of God, ye will wish to have perished from the face of the earth and to have sunk into oblivion. The day will come when ye will earnestly desire to know that which would meet with the good-pleasure of God but, alas, ye shall find no path unto Him. Ye, even as camels that wander aimlessly, will not find a pasture wherein ye may gather and unite upon a Cause in which ye can assuredly believe. At that time God shall cause the Sun of Truth to shine forth and the oceans of His bounty and grace to surge, while ye will have chosen droplets of water as the object of your desire, and will have deprived yourselves of the plenteous waters in His oceans.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVI, 13
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God, People, Pleasure, Truth

“Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man, turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure, while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted upon it.
The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

Life, Pain, Fear, Disease

“A child that knows nothing of God’s earth, of green fields, or sparkling brooks, of breezy hill and springy heather, and whose mind is stored with none of the beauties of nature, but knows only the drunkenness prevalent in the hideous slum it is forced to live in, and whose walks abroad have never extended beyond the corner public-house and the pawnshop, cannot be benefited by education. Such children grow up to depraved, and become a danger and terror to the State; wealth-destroyers instead of wealth-producers.”

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925) English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician

"Land for House," 1898

God, Children, Education, Beauty

“Hung from the underbelly of the Earth
While the stars skid away below
Gormless and brakeless; gravel-loose
Falling silent as gavels in the snow.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Have One On Me (2010)

Star

“All existing things upon this earth, which have knowledge of their own existence, possess, some in one degree and some in another, the power of thought, accompanied by perception, which is the awakening of thought by the effects of external objects upon the senses.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Formal Logic (1847)

Knowledge, Sense

“When I put on my uniform, I feel I am the proudest man on earth. The players should pay the people to come and see us play.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

From his 1971 World Series MVP acceptance speech, as quoted in "Pittsburgh's Clemente Honored"
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

People, Feeling

“Heart-hidden from the outer things I rose;
The spirit woke anew in nightly birth
Unto the vastness where forever glows
The star-soul of the earth.
There all alone in primal ecstasy,
Within her depths where revels never tire,
The Olden Beauty shines: each thought of me
Is veined through with its fire.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

"Night"
By Still Waters (1906)

Beauty, Soul, Star, Birth

“You seek life, and a godly fire
Gushes and gleams for you out of the earth,
As, with shuddering long, you
Hurl yourself down to the flames of the Etna. So by a queen's wanton whim
Pearls were dissolved in wine- heed her not!
What folly, poet, to cast your riches
Into that bright and bubbling cup! Yet still are you holy to me, as the might of the earth
That bore you away, audaciously perishing!
And I would follow the hero into the depths
Did love not hold me.”

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) German poet

"Empedokles"

Love, Life, Wine

“Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 1

Life

“Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down-to-earth manager who would get a days work out of the little bastards.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 1, p. 30 (On Robert Owen)

“From my days as a Marine in combat, to my tenure working undercover in the FBI, to my service as a Congressman representing the hardworking families on Staten Island and Brooklyn, I have spent my entire life fighting on behalf of the People with honor and integrity. The past 24 hours haven’t changed a thing, and I plan to work harder than ever for the people I am exceedingly proud to represent. To my constituents, let me be absolutely clear: the trumped-up charges against me are false and after my peers see the truth, justice will prevail. And while this groundless witch hunt proves there are powerful forces dedicated to tarnishing my reputation as part of a political vendetta, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t do: It doesn’t take back the billions of dollars in Superstorm Sandy aid I fought for in Congress, it doesn’t undo my flood insurance reform bill that will spare millions of Americans from skyrocketing premiums and home foreclosures, and it doesn’t negate the countless success stories of my office helping constituents with difficult challenges, from losing health coverage thanks to Obamacare, to being denied veteran survivor benefits, to helping our seniors deal with multiple daily struggles, simply put…the lives my staff and I have touched for the better are innumerable. And that’s why I am so heartened by the outpouring of love and support – I am truly humbled to work for the most salt of the earth people in the world. Which is why I am back working hard and doing what I’ve done from day one, relentless trying to improve their quality of life through old fashioned hard work and determination.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

Facebook (29 April 2014) https://www.facebook.com/repmichaelgrimm 2010s

Love, Life, People, Health

“And though the union is without intermediary, The manifold works that God does In heaven and earth are, however, Hidden from the spirit. For though God gives Himself as He is with a clear distinction, He gives Himself in the soul’s essence, Where the soul’s powers are unified Above reason And undergo God’s transformation In simplicity. In this place all is full And overflowing, for the spirit feels itself As one truth and one richness And one unity with God.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

God, Truth, Feeling, Soul

“[A world-system is] a system that is a world and which can be, most often has been, located in an area less than the entire globe. World-systems analysis argues that the units of social reality within which we operate, whose rules constrain us, are for the most part such world-systems (other than the now extinct, small mini-systems that once existed on the earth). World-system analysis argues that there have been thus far only two varieties of world-systems: world-economies and world empires. A world-empire (examples, the Roman Empire, Han China) are large bureaucratic structures with a single political center and an axial division of labor, but multiple cultures. A world-economy is a large axial division of labor with multiple political centers and multiple cultures.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Immanuel Wallerstein (2004, p. 98), as cited in: Graham Scambler. Contemporary Theorists for Medical Sociology, 2012. p. 255

World, Reality, Parting

““They say that they’re a punishment on godly people for allowing sin to walk the earth unanswered—”
“Who is this ‘they’ you’re always referring to?” Stanton glared at Rose, his eyes gleaming with unhidden malice. “Your mongoloid Aunt Kindy? Your drunken Uncle Sal? Or are you talking about the slack-jawed hacks who bang out those dime novels for a bottle of whiskey and the price of a flophouse?”
Rose stared at him, her mouth open in astonishment. But Stanton pressed on, his voice flat and awful.
“Or maybe you’re just using the word ‘they’ as so many pea-brained idiots use it, as a cowardly rhetorical device, an excuse to say the things you really believe without giving anyone the chance to judge you for the narrow-minded, stupid creature you are.””

M. K. Hobson book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 15, “Ososolyeh” (pp. 211-212)

People, Stupidity, Chance

“If we want to save the planet earth, to save life and humanity, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system. Unless we put an end to the capitalist system, it is impossible to imagine that there will be equality and justice on this planet earth. This is why I believe that it is important to put an end to the exploitation of human beings and to the pillage of natural resources, to put an end to destructive wars for markets and raw materials, to the plundering of energy, particularly fossil fuels, to the excessive consumption of goods and to the accumulation of waste. The capitalist system only allows us to heap up waste. I would like to propose that the trillions of money earmarked for war should be channelled to make good the damage to the environment, to make reparations to the earth.”

Evo Morales (1959) Bolivian politician

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1246-june-2008/material-world-evo-moralesa-call-socialism

Life, Money, War, Justice

“"Do not die that we may not die," the dead cry out within you. "We had no time to enjoy the women we desired; be in time, sleep with them! We had no time to turn our thoughts into deeds; turn them into deeds! We had no time to grasp and to crystallize the face of our hope; make it firm!" …
But you must choose with care whom to hurl down again into the chasms of your blood, and whom you shall permit to mount once more into the light and the earth.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Women, Hope, Sleep, Light

“So we keep asking, over and over,
Until a handful of earth
Stops our mouths —
But is that an answer?”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Lazarus, I (1854)

“Goddess of woods, tremendous in the chase
To mountain boars, and all the savage race!
Wide o'er the ethereal walks extends thy sway,
And o'er the infernal mansions void of day!
Look upon us on earth! unfold our fate,
And say what region is our destined seat?
Where shall we next thy lasting temples raise?
And choirs of virgins celebrate thy praise?”
Diva potens nemorum terror silvestribus ac spes! Cui licet anfractus ire per ethereos, Infernasque domos terrestria iura resolve. Et dic quas terras nos habitare velis. Dic certam sedem qua te venerabor in euum. Qua tibi virgineis templa dicabo choris.

Geoffrey of Monmouth The History of the Kings of Britain

Diva potens nemorum terror silvestribus ac spes!
</ref>Cui licet anfractus ire per ethereos,
Infernasque domos terrestria iura resolve.
Et dic quas terras nos habitare velis.
Dic certam sedem qua te venerabor in euum.
Qua tibi virgineis templa dicabo choris.
Bk. 1, ch. 11; pp. 100-101.
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

Fate, Mountain

“Suppose, now, there is such a thing as an all-round inferior race. Is that any reason why we should propose to preserve it for ever…? Whether there is a race so inferior I do not know, but certainly there is no race so superior as to be trusted with human charges. The true answer to Aristotle’s plea for slavery, that there are “natural slaves,” lies in the fact that there are no “natural” masters… The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior. There is only one sane and logical thing to be done with a really inferior race, and that is to exterminate it. Now there are various ways of exterminating a race, and most of them are cruel. You may end it with fire and sword after the old Hebrew fashion; you may enslave it and work it to death, as the Spaniards did the Caribs; you may set it boundaries and then poison it slowly with deleterious commodities, as the Americans do with most of their Indians; you may incite it to wear clothing to which it is not accustomed and to live under new and strange conditions that will expose it to infectious diseases to which you yourselves are immune, as the missionaries do the Polynesians; you may resort to honest simple murder, as we English did with the Tasmanians; or you can maintain such conditions as conduce to “race suicide,” as the British administration does in Fiji. Suppose, then, for a moment, that there is an all-round inferior race… If any of the race did, after all, prove to be fit to survive, they would survive—they would be picked out with a sure and automatic justice from the over-ready condemnation of all their kind. Is there, however, an all-round inferior race in the world? Even the Australian black-fellow is, perhaps, not quite so entirely eligible for extinction as a good, wholesome, horse-racing, sheep-farming Australian white may think. These queer little races, the black-fellows, the Pigmies, the Bushmen, may have their little gifts, a greater keenness, a greater fineness of this sense or that, a quaintness of the imagination or what not, that may serve as their little unique addition to the totality of our Utopian civilisation. We are supposing that every individual alive on earth is alive in Utopia, and so all the surviving “black-fellows” are there. Every one of them in Utopia has had what none have had on earth, a fair education and fair treatment, justice, and opportunity…Some may be even prosperous and admired, may have married women of their own or some other race, and so may be transmitting that distinctive thin thread of excellence, to take its due place in the great synthesis of the future.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 3

Death, Women, World, Education

“It is true that we were cautious in our planning. There were many uncertainties about how well our Lunar module systems and our Pressure suit and backpack would match the engineering predictions in the hostile lunar environment. We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth. That combination cannot be duplicated here on Earth, but we tried as best we could to test our equipment for those conditions. For example, because normal air conditioning is inadequate for lunar conditions, we were required to use cold water to cool the interior of our suits. We did not have any data to tell us how long the small water tank in our backpacks would suffice. NASA officials limited our surface working time to 2 and 3/4 hours on that first surface exploration to assure that we would not expire of hyperthermia.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

Letter to Robert Krulwich (2010)

Hostility, Water, Time, Perfection

“But to pass on: Some have propounded the inquiry whether it is practicable for us to go on with the confederacy without further accessions? Have we the means and ability to maintain nationality among the powers of the earth? On this point I would barely say, that as anxiously as we all have been, and are, for the border States, with institutions similar to ours, to join us, still we are abundantly able to maintain our position, even if they should ultimately make up their minds not to cast their destiny with us. That they ultimately will join us be compelled to do it is my confident belief; but we can get on very well without them, even if they should not.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Confidence

“Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system is essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are identical. The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells. The size, structure and component design of the protein synthetic machinery is practically the same in all cells. In terms of their basic biochemical design, therefore no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth.”

Michael Denton book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

Source: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 250

“When facing “scientific” arguments for God like these, ask yourself three questions. First, what’s more likely: that these are puzzles only because we refuse to see God as an answer, or simply because science hasn’t yet provided a naturalistic answer? In other words, is the religious explanation so compelling that we can tell scientists to stop working on the evolution and mechanics of consciousness, or on the origin of life, because there can never be a naturalistic explanation? Given the remarkable ability of science to solve problems once considered intractable, and the number of scientific phenomena that weren’t even known a hundred years ago, it’s probably more judicious to admit ignorance than to tout divinity.
Second, if invoking God seems more appealing than admitting scientific ignorance, ask yourself if religious explanations do anything more than rationalize our ignorance. That is, does the God hypothesis provide independent and novel predictions or clarify things once seen as puzzling—as truly scientific hypotheses do? Or are religious explanations simply stop-gaps that lead nowhere?…Does invoking God to explain the fine-tuning of the universe explain anything else about the universe? If not, then that brand of natural theology isn’t really science, but special pleading.
Finally, even if you attribute scientifically unexplained phenomena to God, ask yourself if the explanation gives evidence for your God—the God who undergirds your religion and your morality. If we do find evidence for, say, a supernatural origin of morality, can it be ascribed to the Christian God, or to Allah, Brahma, or any one god among the thousands worshipped on Earth? I’ve never seen advocates of natural theology address this question.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 156-157

Life, God, Religion, Question

“The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply asserts being, "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2006, Faith, Reason and the University — Memories and Reflections (2006)

Wisdom, God, Faith, Religion

“""… Why Nimrod? Why that name?""
Ramrod straight, he looked down at her. ""I guess you skipped Bible studies at school. Genesis 10, verses 8 to 10: 'And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth… And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and-""
""Babel?""
""It was only generations after the flood of Noah. Chapter 11, verse 4. 'And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.'""
""But God struck them down when they built the tower.""
""Yes. But why? 11, 6. 'Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.' That's what God said about mankind. He feared us, and so He struck us down. We have that verse up on the wall on big banners, to motivate the workforce. 'Nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.'""
""Wow,"" Thandie said. ""You're challenging God?""
""Why the hell not?""”

Stephen Baxter (1957) author

Source: Flood (2008), Chapter 90

God, Fear, School, Imagination

“Take movement for example. Forces acting up, down, or from side to side. You make theories to explain it all, but you might well remember that it was you that invented them all. For Mach there was no reason to believe the rest of the cosmos was doing what your little bit was doing, so science should only describe not try to explain. Even description is relative. Am I moving or is the back ground? Or take the position of a star. It depends on the position you see it from, which depends on the date and time, which in turn depends on the position of the earth, in a solar orbit, in a solar system, moving around the edge of a Galaxy which may be moving away from other Galaxies. Say that you've decided that I'm moving and the background is standing still. Is the background moving relative to something else?”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985)

Star, Science, Time, Dependency

“Men started to geoform the earth in the middle of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, a lot of the early work was done by people who failed to see the earth as a closed set of mutually interrelated systems.”

Joe Haldeman book Mindbridge

Source: Mindbridge (1976), Chapter 8 “Geoformy 1” (p. 33)

Men, People

“Earth grates on my nerves. It gives me a big pain these days. That’s why I live out here. Earth is overcrowded, bureaucratic, unhealthy, and suffering from too many mass-psychoses to bother classifying.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 3 (p. 61)

Pain, Suffering

“Yesterday I went for the second time to the Crystal Palace. We remained in it about three hours, and I must say I was more struck with it on this occasion than at my first visit. It is a wonderful place – vast, strange, new and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there, from the great compartments filled with railway engines and boilers, with mill machinery in full work, with splendid carriages of all kinds, with harness of every description, to the glass-covered and velvet-spread stands loaded with the most gorgeous work of the goldsmith and silversmith, and the carefully guarded caskets full of real diamonds and pearls worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. It may be called a bazaar or a fair, but it is such a bazaar or fair as Eastern genii might have created. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth – as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it this, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect. The multitude filling the great aisles seems ruled and subdued by some invisible influence. Amongst the thirty thousand souls that peopled it the day I was there not one loud noise was to be heard, not one irregular movement seen; the living tide rolls on quietly, with a deep hum like the sea heard from the distance.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on attending The Great Exhibition of 1851. The Brontes' Life and Letters, (by Clement King Shorter) (1907)

People, Soul, Time, Sea

“Economic reforms based on the idea of limitless growth in a limited world, can only be maintained by the powerful grabbing the resources of the vulnerable. The resource grab that is essential for “growth” creates a culture of rape—the rape of the earth, of local self-reliant economies, and of women.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

On economic reforms in India and rape in India, from " Vandana Shiva: Our Violent Economy is Hurting Women http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/violent-economic-reforms-and-women" Yes Magazine (18 January 2013)

Women, World, Idea

“Archimedes had stated, that given the force, any given weight might be moved; and even boasted that if there were another earth, by going into it he could remove this.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Marcellus
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Is a museum
Peace? I asked. Am I the keeper
Of the heart's relics, blowing the dust
In my own eyes? I am a man;
I never wanted the drab role
Life assigned me, an actor playing
To the past's audience upon a stage
Of earth and stone; the absurd label
Of birth, of race hanging askew
About my shoulders. I was in prison
Until you came; your voice was a key
Turning in the enormous lock
Of hopelessness. Did the door open
To let me out or yourselves in?”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)

Life, Peace, Birth, Past

“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

Children, Age, Boy, Heart

“Then re-united to the friends with whom vve took sweet counsel upon earth, we shall recount our toil, only to heighten our ecstasy; and call to mind the toil and the din of war, oniy that, with a more bounding throb and a richer song, we may fee! and celebrate the wonders of redemption.”

Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 305.

War

“God's beloved Son, leaving the echoes of His cries upon the mountains and the traces of His weary feet upon the streets, shedding His tears over the tombs and His blood upon Golgotha, associating His life with our homes, and His corpse with our sepulchres, shows us how we, too, may be sons in the humblest vale of life, and sure of sympathy in heaven amid the deepest wrongs and sorrows of earth.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 69.

Life, God, Home, Mountain

“Foldings of the earth's crust, low hills, extensive plains, mountain-chains and narrow valleys, broad table-lands and wide valleys, local chimneys or volcanoes, river-beds, lake-basins, inland seas,—such are some of the phenomena which, disconnected as they seem at first glance, have nevertheless been brought under certain principles, and explained according to definite physical laws.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Geological Sketches (1870), ch 4, p. 98 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=116

Law, Mountain, Sea

“A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

The Poisonwood Bible (1998).

Change

“VIII. On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile--that the Rebellion, if crushed out tomorrow, would be renewed within a year if Slavery were left in full vigor--that Army officers who remain to this day devoted to Slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union--and that every hour of deference to Slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union, I appeal to the testimony of your Ambassadors in Europe. It is freely at your service, not at mine. Ask them to tell you candidly whether the seeming subserviency of your policy to the slaveholding, slavery-upholding interest, is not the perplexity, the despair of statesmen of all parties, and be admonished by the general answer.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Way, Feeling, Intelligence, Time

“While in Campania the burning of the earth makes ashes, in Tuscany the combustion of the stone makes carbuncular sand. Both are excellent in walls but one is better to use for buildings on land, the other for piers under salt water.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VI, Sec. 6

Water

“In point of material wealth and resources, we are greatly in advance of them. The taxable property of the Confederate States cannot be less than twenty-two hundred millions of dollars! This, I think I venture but little in saying, may be considered as five times more than the colonies possessed at the time they achieved their independence. Georgia, alone, possessed last year, according to the report of our comptroller-general, six hundred and seventy-two millions of taxable property. The debts of the seven confederate States sum up in the aggregate less than eighteen millions, while the existing debts of the other of the late United States sum up in the aggregate the enormous amount of one hundred and seventy-four millions of dollars. This is without taking into account the heavy city debts, corporation debts, and railroad debts, which press, and will continue to press, as a heavy incubus upon the resources of those States. These debts, added to others, make a sum total not much under five hundred millions of dollars. With such an area of territory as we have-with such an amount of population-with a climate and soil unsurpassed by any on the face of the earth-with such resources already at our command-with productions which control the commerce of the world-who can entertain any apprehensions as to our ability to succeed, whether others join us or not?”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

World, Thinking, Time, Wealth

“I disagree with Les. We always found good cunt at the Lyceum. Friendly cunt, clean cunt, spare cunt, jeans and knicker stuffed full of nice juicy hairy cunt, handfuls of cunt, palmful grabbing the cunt by the stem, or the root – infantile memories of cunt – backrow slides – slithery oily cunt, the cunt that breathes – the cunt that’s neatly wrapped in cotton, in silk, in nylon, that announces, that speaks or thrusts, that winks that’s squeezed in a triangle of furtive cloth backed by an arse that’s creamy, springy billowy cushiony tight, knicker lined, knicker skinned, circumscribed by flowers and cotton, by views, clinging knicker, juice ridden knicker, hot knicker, wet knicker, swelling vulva knicker, witty cunt, teeth smiling the eyes biting cunt, cultured cunt, culture vulture cunt, finger biting cunt, cunt that pours, cunt that spreads itself over your soft lips, that attacks, cunt that imagines – cunt you dream about, cunt you create as a Melba, a meringue with smooth sides – remembered from school boys’ smelly first cunt, first foreign cunt, amazing cunt – cunt that’s cruel. Cunt that protects itself and makes you want it even more cunt – cunt that smells of the air, of the earth, of bakeries, of old apples, of figs, of sweat of hands of sour yeast of fresh fish cunt. So – are we going Les? We might pick up a bit of crumpet.”

Steven Berkoff East

East (1975), Scene 17

School, Smile, Dreams, Imagination

“These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

No. 37 ("Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries"). Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

God, Dead

“Neither in any if the stars, nor in the sun, nor in the planets that are most operant in the world, can organs be disntinguished or imagined by us; nevertheless, they live and endow with life small bodies at the earth's elevated points. If there is aught of which man may boast, that of a surety is soul, is mind; and the other animals, too, are ennobled by soul; even God, by whose rod all things are governed, is soul.”

William Gilbert (astronomer) book De Magnete

As quoted in Gilbert, William. 2013 ed. De Magnete https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=QsLDAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Courier Corporation, pp. 130-131. De Magnete (1600)

Life, God, World, Soul

“To make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun”

Thomas Browne (1605–1682) English polymath

Letter to a Friend (circa 1656)

God, World, Sun

“Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

A Writer's Diary, Volume 1: 1873-1876 (1994), p. 734 http://books.google.com.br/books?id=38xQHS4h0yEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=pt-BR&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Life, Soul, Idea, Personality

“Earth loves the rain, the proud sky loves to give it. The whole world loves to create futurity. I say then to the world, "I share your love." Is this not the source of the phrase, "This loves to happen"?”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

The last phrase is quoted in J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey as "It loved to happen".
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X, 21
Original: (el) ῾Ἐρᾷ μὲν ὄμβρου γαῖα, ἐρᾷ δὲ ὁ σεμνὸς αἰθήρ,᾿ ἐρᾷ δὲ ὁ κόσμος ποιῆσαι ὃ ἂν μέλλῃ γίνεσθαι. λέγω οὖν τῷ κόσμῳ ὅτι σοὶ συνερῶ. μήτι δὲ οὕτω κἀκεῖνο λέγεται, ὅτι: φιλεῖ τοῦτο γίνεσθαι;

Love, World, Future

“Our demise may instead result from the habitat destruction that ensues when the AI begins massive global construction projects using nanotech factories and assemblers—construction projects which quickly, perhaps within days or weeks, tile all of the Earth’s surface with solar panels, nuclear reactors, supercomputing facilities with protruding cooling towers, space rocket launchers, or other installations whereby the AI intends to maximize the long-term cumulative realization of its values. Human brains, if they contain information relevant to the AI’s goals, could be disassembled and scanned, and the extracted data transferred to some more efficient and secure storage format.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 6

“There is the necessity for the spiritual point of focus to be embodied on earth. This is the one thing that has been lacking.”

Martin Cecil, 7th Marquess of Exeter (1909–1988) Marquess of Exeter

Thus It Is, 1989, p. 110
As of a Trumpet, On Eagle's Wings, Thus It Is

“Earth was once molten rock, and now it makes spaceships.”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

Found on Pilgrimage to NASA's Apollo Flight Center http://thegreatstory.org/nasa-houston.html write up by Connie Barlow, a fellow in Evolutionary Spirituality

“Fiction is made of life/ Of earth and clay/ Of tears and laughter/ Of blood and sweat/ Hear them, the works of an author or a painter/ The singer and the clown/ Preserve the mystery of life.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Life: Relish It!
Life: Relish It! (2012)

Life, Tear, Laughter

“But although the attractive virtue of the earth extends upwards, as has been said, so very far, yet if any stone should be at a distance great enough to become sensible compared with the earth’s diameter, it is true that on the motion of the earth such a stone would not follow altogether; its own force of resistance would be combined with the attractive force of the earth, and thus it would extricate itself in some degree from the motion of the earth.”

Johannes Kepler book Astronomia nova

As quoted by Bryant, ibid.
Astronomia nova (1609)

“The Lord himself hath led him with his own Almighty hand.
He hath caused him to spring from a trunk without root, and planted him again in a distant and more delightful spot, and caused him to rise up to a considerable tree.
Inspired him with an inclination for science so passionate as to become the most gratifying of all others.
Given him all the means he could either wish for, or enjoy, of attaining the objects he had in view.
Favoured him in such a manner that even the not obtaining of what he wished for, ultimately turned out to his great advantage.
Caused him to be received into favour by the "Mœcenates Scientiarum"; by the greatest men in the kingdom; and by the Royal Family.
Given him an advantageous and honourable post, the very one that, above all others in the world, he had wished for.
Given him the wife for whom he most wished, and who managed his household affairs whilst he was engaged in laborious studies.
Given him children who have turned out good and virtuous.
Given him a son for his successor in office.
Given him the largest collection of plants that ever existed in the world, and his greatest delight.
Given him lands and other property, so that though there has been nothing superfluous, nothing has he wanted.
Honoured him with the titles of Archiater, Knight, Nobleman, and with Distinction in the learned world.
Protected him from fire.
Preserved his life above 60 years.
Permitted him to visit his secret council-chambers.
Permitted him to see more of the creation than any mortal before him. Given him greater knowledge of natural history than any one had hitherto acquired.
The Lord hath been with him whithersoever he hath walked, and hath cut off all his enemies from before him, and hath made him a name, like the name of the great men that are in the earth. 1 Chron. xvn. 8.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

As quoted in The Annual Review and History of Literature http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=hx0ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Lord%20himself%20hath%20led%20him%20with%20his%20own%20Almighty%20hand%22&f=false (1806), by Arthur Aikin, T. N. Longman and O. Rees, p. 472. Also found in Life of Linnaeus https://archive.org/stream/lifeoflinnaeus00brigiala#page/176/mode/2up/search/endeavoured (1858), by J. Van Voorst & Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, London. pp. 176-177. Linnaeus Diary

Life, Men, Children, Secret

“There is a force in the earth which causes the moon to move.”
In Terra inest virtus, quae Lunam del.

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

Essay dedicated to the Archduke Ferdinand, as quoted in Kepler (1993) by Max Caspar, Sect. II, Ch. 9, p. 110

“Go to the United States, into Europe, or wherever you can come across men who have been in the midst of this people, and one will tell you that we are a poor, ignorant, deluded people; the next will tell you that we are the most industrious and intelligent people on the earth, and are destined to rise to eminence as a nation, and spread, and continue to spread, until we revolutionize the whole earth. If you pass on to the third man, and inquire what he thinks of the "Mormons," he will say they are fools, duped and led astray by Joe Smith, who was a knave, a false Prophet, and a money digger. Why is all this? It is because there is a spirit in man. And when the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached on the earth, and the kingdom of God is established, there is also a spirit in these things, and an Almighty spirit too. When these two spirits come in contact one with the other, the spirit of the Gospel reflects light upon the spirit which God has placed in man, and wakes him up to a consciousness of his true state, which makes him afraid he will be condemned, for he perceives at once that "Mormonism" is true. "Our craft is in danger," is the first thought that strikes the wicked and dishonest of mankind, when the light of truth shines upon them. Say they, "If these people called Latter-day Saints are correct in their views, the whole world must be wrong, and what will become of our time-honoured institutions, and of our influence, which we have swayed successfully over the minds of the people for ages. This Mormonism must be put down."”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 1:187-188 (June 19, 1853)
1850s

Men, Money, God, People

“We will rush ever on without fear;
Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet!
For we carry the Heavens with us, dear,
While the Earth slips from our feet!”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

Sunday at Hampstead, part X

Fear

“Only the mercenaries were here by choice. To Simon, the minds of men who would come to this of their own will were suddenly as incomprehensible as the thoughts of spiders or lizards—less so, even, for the small creatures of the earth almost always fled from danger. These were madmen, Simon realized, and that was the direst problem of the world: that madmen should be strong and unafraid, so that they could force their will on the weak and peace-loving. If God allowed such madness to be, Simon could not help thinking, then He was an old God who had lost His grip.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 12, “Raven’s Dance” (pp. 392-393).

Love, Men, God, World

“You English are like mad bulls — you see red everywhere! What on earth has come over you, that you would heap on us such suspicion as is unworthy of a great nation… I regard this missaprehension as a personal insult… You make it uncommonly difficult for a man to remain friendly to England.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

To the Daily Telegraph on his attitude towards Britain
The Growth of Nationalism (1992)

Personality, Madness

“My Minde to Me a Kindome Is;
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That earth affords or grows by kind:
Though much I want which most would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.”

Edward Dyer (1543–1607) courtier

MS. Rawl 85 (1588), p. 17. A very similar but anonymous copy is in the British Museum. Additional MS. 15225, p. 85. And there is an imitation in J. Sylvester’s Works, p. 651, Hannah, Courtly Poets. Compare:
My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such perfect joy therein I find,
As far exceeds all earthly bliss
That God and Nature hath assigned.
Though much I want that most
would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
Byrd: Psalmes, Sonnets, etc. 1588.
My mind to me an empire is,
While grace affordeth health.
Robert Southwell (1560–1595), Loo Home.
"Mens regnum bona possidet" (translated as "A good mind possesses a kingdom"), Seneca, Thyestes, ii. 380.

Joy

“No monument should stand over my grave, only an apple-tree, in memory of the three apples; the two of Eve and Paris, which made hell out of earth, and that of I. Newton, which elevated the earth again into the circle of heavenly bodies.”

Farkas Bolyai (1775–1856) Hungarian mathematician

As quoted by Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics (1893) p. 303, citing Franz Schmidt, "Aus dem Leben zweier ungarischer Mathematiker Johann und Wolfgang Bolyai von Bolya," Grunert's Archiv, 48:2, 1868.

Hell, Tree, Memory

“When the blessed canopy had been fixed about a mile from the gate of Arangal, the tents around the fort were pitched together so closely that the head of a needle could not go between them' Orders were issued that every man should erect behind his own tent a kathgar, that is wooden defence. The trees were cut with axes and felled, notwithstanding their groans; and the Hindus, who worship trees, could not at that time come to the rescue of their idols, so that every cursed tree which was in that capital of idolatry was cut down to the roots'….
'During the attack, the catapults were busily plied on both sides' 'Praise be to God for his exaltation of the religion of Muhammad. It is not to be doubted that stones are worshipped by Gabrs,74 but as the stones did no service to them, they only bore to heaven the futility of that worship, and at the same time prostrated their devotees upon earth”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 81-83
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

God, Religion, Tree, Time

“The “Copernican Principle” or “Cosmic Mediocrity”… states, basically, that Earth does not occupy a privileged place in the universe. Universality asserts more, namely that there are no privileged places or times.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

"Multiversality" (2013)

Universe, Time

“Yes, beloved brothers, every one who is thus rightly taught of God, in this wisdom (for she is the wisdom of the saints), may glory, by the grace given them, over all graduated doctors, theologists, jurists, orators and poets, although he could neither write norspeak, and were he the most helpless upon earth. But all those who are not instructed in the wisdom from God, though they were as glorious as Solomon, as victorious as Alexander, as rich as Crosesis, as strong as Hercules, as learned as Plato, as subtle as Aristotle, as eloquent as Demosthenes and Cicero, and as well skilled in languages as Mithridates; yea, so greatly experienced that his like were not to be found from the beginning, nevertheless, he is a fool in the eyes of the Lord; this must be confessed.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.106

Wisdom, God, Fools, Strong

“In these different worlds his (the disbeliever's) clothes are fire, even if they are of silk, and the place of his sojourn is fire, even if he is on the highest throne on the Earth, and his food is likewise fire. The clothes of others (of the believers) are made of what is created in Paradise, their seat is the highest seat of Paradise, and their food is the most succulent fruits of Paradise, even if they are clothed only with cotton, if they associate only on the bare soil, if they feed only on leaves of lettuce”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

II, 9
The Persian Bayán

World, Food, Clothes

“Canst thou not see adown the silver cloudland streaming
Rivers of faery light, dewdrop on dewdrop falling,
Starfire of silver flames, lighting the dark beneath?
And what enraptured hosts burn on the dusky heath!
Come thou away with them, for Heaven to Earth is calling.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Light

“Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

France, An Ode. v
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love, Sea

“Creationism is not just an issue; Creationism is the issue and exists in its both young and older Earth formations. That means in Nigeria people subscribe to the notion that the Earth was created whether it is a few thousand years ago or tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. The belief is that Earth came into being through a divine decree. People often show disdain for science because it challenges their creationist ideas.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

An Interview with Dr. Leo Igwe — Founder, Nigerian Humanist Movement (2017)

People, Idea, Science

“There is a beautiful tale among the Australian aborigines which says that the bow and arrow were not man's invention, but an ancestor God turned himself into a bow and his wife became the bowstring, for she constantly has her hands around his neck, as the bowstring embraces the bow. So the couple came down to earth and appeared to a man, revealing themselves as bow and bowstring, and from that the man understood how to construct a bow. The bow ancestor and his wife then disappeared again into a hole in the earth. So man, like an ape, only copied, but did not invent, the bow and arrow. And so the smiths originally, or so it seems from Eliade's rather plausible argument, did not feel that they had invented metallurgy; rather, they learned how to transform metals on the basis of understanding how God made the world.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Creation Myths (1972), Deus Faber

God, World, Beauty, Feeling

“Even in our times, despite those who deny God, earth is very close to Heaven.”

Josemaría Escrivá (1902–1975) Spanish theologian

#992
The Forge (1987)

God, Time

“So how do you do it?
With just words and just music
Capture the feeling
That my earth is somebody's ceiling
Can I deliver in sound
The weight of the ground
of a cemetery
in the center of Queens”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"Chasing the Sun"
Lyrics, The Blessed Unrest (2013)

Music, Feeling

“I have often thought, if it was not for this Tyranny which Custom usurps over us, that Men of any tolerable Good-nature could never be reconcil'd to the killing of so many Animals for their daily Food, as long as the bountiful Earth so plentifully provides them with Varieties of vegetable Dainties.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark P, p. 187
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Men, Food, Nature, Animals

“You can't rearrange freshly fallen snow, you can't fix snow so it looks untouched. You can rework earth, and sand and even grass if you try hard enough. Water takes care of itself, because it swallows everything and flows back together once it's done swallowing. And air is always in place because you can't see it. Everything but snow would have kept quiet.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 11

Grass, Water

“But the child, lying in the bosom of the vernal earth and deep in herbage, now crawls forward on his face and crushes the soft grasses, now in clamorous thirst for milk cries for his beloved nurse; again he smiles, and would fain utter words that wrestle with his infant lips, and wonders at the noise of the woods, or plucks at aught he meets, or with open mouth drinks in the day, and strays in the forest all ignorant of its dangers, in carelessness profound.”
At puer in gremio vernae telluris et alto gramine nunc faciles sternit procursibus herbas in vultum nitens, caram modo lactis egeno nutricem clangore ciens iterumque renidens et teneris meditans verba inluctantia labris miratur nemorum strepitus aut obuia carpit aut patulo trahit ore diem nemorique malorum inscius et vitae multum securus inerrat.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book IV, Line 793 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Smile, Lying, Drink, Grass

“Blessed loves! how happy they have made us on the earth; what will they be when they have deepened through ages, with no alloy of envy or suspicion or selfishness or sorrow?”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 306.

Love, Age, Envy, Selfishness

“The rapid establishment of Christianity must therefore have been from the conviction which those who embraced it, had of its "Truth and power unto salvation." Christianity at first spread itself amongst the most enlightened nations of the earth - in those places where human learning was in its greatest perfection; and, by the force of the evidence which attended it, amongst such men it gained an establishment. It has been justly observed, that "it happened very providentially to the honour of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were t their height, and when there were men who made it the business of their lives to search after truth and lift the several opinions of the philosophers and wise men, concerning the duty, the end, and chief happiness of reasonable creatures." Both the learned and the ignorant alike embraced its doctrines; the learned were not likely to be deceived in the proofs which were offered; and the same cause undoubtedly operated to produce the effect upon each. But an immediate conversion of the bulk of mankind, can arise only from some proofs of a ddivine authority offering themselves immediately to the senses; the preaching of any new doctrine, if lest to operate only by its own force, would go but a very little way towards the immediate conversion of the gnorant, who have no principle of action but what arises from habit, and whose powers of reasoning are insufficient to correct their errors. When Mahomet was required by his followers to work a miracle for their conviction, he always declined it; he was too cautious to trust to an experiment, the success of which was scarcely whithin the bounds of probablity; he amused his followers with prtended visions, which with the aid afterwards of the civil and military powr; and as the accomplishment of that event was by a few obscure persons, who founded their pretentions upon authority from heaven, we are next to consider, what kind of proofs of their divine commission they offered to the world; and whether they themselves could have been deceived, or mankind could have been deludded by them.”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 20; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA261," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 261-262

Men, Truth, Age, World

“Indeed, I am a safeguard to the inhabitants of earth as the stars are safeguards to the inhabitants of heaven.”

Muhammad al-Mahdi (869–941) 12th and last Imam in Twelver Shia Islam

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78 p. 380
Religious-based Quotes

Star

“I decided that perhaps I would like to think of myself as an extremist -- in the light of the spirit which made Jesus an extremist for love. If it sounds as though I am comparing myself to the Savior, let me remind you that all who honor themselves with the claim of being "Christians" should compare themselves to Jesus. Thus I consider myself an extremist for that brotherhood of man which Paul so nobly expressed: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Love is the only force on earth that can be dispensed or received in an extreme manner, without any qualifications, without any harm to the giver or to the receiver.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html 1960s

Love, Thinking, Light, Christ

“Earth gravity and a line of horizon is how we, as Earth humans, are accustomed to gauging spatial orientation.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

Gauge

“As long as all our dead live in the Spanish earth, and they will live as long as the earth lives, no system of tyranny ever will prevail in Spain.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

"On the American Dead in Spain", New Masses (February 14, 1939)

Dead

“Since my youth geography has been for me the primary object of study. When I was engaged in it, having applied the considerations of the natural and geometric sciences, I liked, little by little, not only the description of the earth, but also the structure of the whole machinery of the world, whose numerous elements are not known by anyone to date.”

Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594) cartographer, philosopher and mathematician

1578, Introduction to Ptolemy's Geography.

Youth, World, Nature, Study

“Plowboy: In your opinion, what are mankind's prospects for the near future?
Asimov: To tell the truth, I don't think the odds are very good that we can solve our immediate problems. I think the chances that civilization will survive more than another 30 years—that it will still be flourishing in 2010—are less than 50 percent.
Plowboy: What sort of disaster do you foresee?
Asimov: I imagine that as population continues to increase—and as the available resources decrease—there will be less energy and food, so we'll all enter a stage of scrounging. The average person's only concerns will be where he or she can get the next meal, the next cigarette, the next means of transportation. In such a universal scramble, the Earth will be just plain desolated, because everyone will be striving merely to survive regardless of the cost to the environment. Put it this way: If I have to choose between saving myself and saving a tree, I'm going to choose me.
Terrorism will also become a way of life in a world marked by severe shortages. Finally, some government will be bound to decide that the only way to get what its people need is to destroy another nation and take its goods … by pushing the nuclear button.
And this absolute chaos is going to develop—even if nobody wants nuclear war and even if everybody sincerely wants peace and social justice—if the number of mouths to feed continues to grow. Nothing will be able to stand up against the pressure of the whole of humankind simply trying to stay alive!”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Life, War, People, Truth

“Which would you part with first-your tobacco, your whisky, or your religion? Your tea, or your religion? Which would you shake hands with and bid good-bye for ever-your coffee, or your religion? I should think I had disgraced the man that stands before you this day, if I loved any object on the earth better than I love my religion and my God.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 8:140 (August 5, 1860)
1860s

Love, God, Religion, Coffee

“There was strong warrant for pretensions… As far back as 1493, Pope Alexander VI had settled disputes between Spain and Portugal arising out of their rivalry in the Orient and the Occident by drawing a line from pole to pole one hundred leagues west of the Azores, giving all west of it to the Spanish, all east of it to the Portuguese. Both these nations attempted more or less persistently to exercise the sway thus given over the oceans as well as over the continent. The Portuguese forbade under heavy penalties any person, whether native or alien, to pass through the waters off the African and Brazilian coasts without special permission; the Spanish were hardly less severe toward those who without leave approached their dependencies. But, though the realization of the earth's rotundity renewed the old difficulty, and Spain and Portugal discovered that the Papal decision was futile, since all their new dominions could be approached both from the east and the west, both nations continued to maintain, as best they could, their sovereignty over the vast oceans. Other nations followed these examples.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 60-61

Penalty, Exercises, Decision, Strong

“I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 4:461 (28 November 1841)
1840s
Context: I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.

Books, Religion

“Have you ever seen those globes where you can feel the bumps on them? You can feel the mountains? That is baloney. They have to greatly exaggerate those mountains. If you shrank the Earth down to the size of a cue ball to play pool with, the Earth would be rounder and smoother than the cue ball.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Feeling, Mountain

“Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventure upon.
But the sun and the sand
No contractor can copy;
We lie in the land
Of the lotus and poppy;
We vegetate, calm and aesthetic,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), Pretty Halcyon Days

Lie, Strong, Sun, Sea

“Is there no reconciliation of some ancient quarrel, no payment of some long outstanding debt, no courtesy or love or honor to be rendered to those to whom it has long been due; no charitable, humble, kind, useful deed, by which you can promote the glory of God, or good-will among men, or peace upon earth? If there be any such, I beseech you, in God's name, in Christ's name, go and do it.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 204.

Love, Men, God, Peace

“And to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him.”

George Gordon Byron The Dream

Stanza 2.
The Dream (1816)

“"People tend to think like, 'Why should electric vehicles have a subsidy,' but they're not taking into account that all fossil fuel-burning vehicles fundamentally are subsidised by the cost—the environmental cost—to Earth, but nobody's paying for it… We are going to pay for it, obviously—in the future we'll pay for it. It's just not paid for now."—Elon Musk”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

interview with Joe Rogan, published 2018-09-06

People, Thinking, Future

“It was natural that idealistic people who had ceased to believe in heaven should think up some bright hope for humanity on earth. That, I think, more than any objection to "capitalism", accounts for the spread of the socialist dream, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries.”

Max Eastman (1883–1969) American activist

Source: Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955), p. 45

People, Dreams, Hope, Nature

“[T]he human past… belongs not only to (say) the Blackfeet or the Mormons, but to all of us. …[W]e humans cannot be considered as separate from the earth of our evolution. We, too, are "natural."”

Dan Flores (1948) American historian

The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (2003)

Nature, Past

“Man, who is the noblest part of the earth, melts so away as if he were a statue, not of earth, but of snow.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

II. Actio Læsa; The strength, and the functions of the senses, and other faculties change and fail.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Parting

“As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world.
In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book IV, Ch. 4
My Antonia (1918)

World, Way, Mountain, Boy

“Well may storm be on the sky,
And the waters roll on high,
When MANMADIN passes by.
Earth below and heaven above
Well may bend to thee, oh Love!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Manmadin, The Indian Cupid. Floating down the Ganges from The London Literary Gazette (14th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme VII
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Water

“I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature.”

Thomas Jefferson book Jefferson Bible

Letter to Charles Thomson (9 January 1816), on his The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefJesu.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all (the "Jefferson Bible"), which omits all Biblical passages asserting Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection. Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 498–499 1810s

Books, Beauty, Time, Drawing