Quotes about earth
page 6

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Stephen Hawking photo

“The life we have on Earth must have spontaneously generated itself. It must therefore be possible for life to generate spontaneously elsewhere in the universe.”

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

From an appearance in the Discovery Channel program Alien Planet (14 May 2005)

Ovid photo

“O mortals, from your fellows' blood abstain,
Nor taint your bodies with a food profane:
While corn, and pulse by Nature are bestow'd,
And planted orchards bend their willing load;
While labour'd gardens wholesom herbs produce,
And teeming vines afford their gen'rous juice;
Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost,
But tam'd with fire, or mellow'd by the frost;
While kine to pails distended udders bring,
And bees their hony redolent of Spring;
While Earth not only can your needs supply,
But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury;
A guiltless feast administers with ease,
And without blood is prodigal to please.”

Parcite, mortales, dapibus temerare nefandis corpora! sunt fruges, sunt deducentia ramos pondere poma suo tumidaeque in vitibus uvae, sunt herbae dulces, sunt quae mitescere flamma mollirique queant; nec vobis lacteus umor eripitur, nec mella thymi redolentia florem: prodiga divitias alimentaque mitia tellus suggerit atque epulas sine caede et sanguine praebet.

Book XV, 75–82 (from Wikisource); on vegetarianism, as the following quote
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Padre Pio photo

“Every holy Mass, heard with devotion, produces in our souls marvelous effects, abundant spiritual and material graces which we, ourselves, do not know. It is easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”

Padre Pio (1887–1968) Italian saint, priest, stigmatist and mystic

Gerardo Di Flumeri, The Mystery of the Cross in Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, National Centre for Padre Pio, Barto, PA. p. 16.

Nikola Tesla photo
José Saramago photo

“Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical, stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if that beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and that all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarled to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skien, or indeed, if we may be permitted on more stock phrase, in the skien of life. … These are the delusions of the pure and unprepared, the beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.”

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 54 (Vintage 2003)

Robert Browning photo
Don Marquis photo

“it wont be long now It won't be long
till earth is barren as the moon
and sapless as a mumbled bone”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

archy and mehitabel (1927), what the ants are saying

Solomon photo
John Glenn photo

“I pray every day and I think everybody should. I don't think you can be up here and look out the window as I did the first day and look out at the Earth from this vantage point. We're not so high compared to people who went to the moon and back. But to look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is, to me, impossible. It just strengthens my faith.”

John Glenn (1921–2016) American astronaut and politician

As quoted in Roger D. Launius. 2004. Frontiers of Space Exploration. Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 181. Interview: An American hero returns to space: John Glenn and the Sts-95 Shuttle Mission News Conference on Orbit (5 November 1998).

Nikola Tesla photo
Charles Spurgeon photo
Napoleon I of France photo

“I am a monarch of God's creation, and you reptiles of the earth dare not oppose me. I render an account of my government to none save God and Jesus Christ.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Addressing members of the Catholic clergy assembled during ‘Bonaparte's Conference with the Catholic and Protestant clergy at Breda,’ May 1, 1810 (originally reported in the Gazette of Dorpt), as quoted in The life of Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of the French: with a preliminary view of the French revolution, Sir Walter Scott, Philadelphia: Leary & Getz, 1857, p. 91 http://books.google.com/books?id=6yEMAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA91&dq=%22you+reptiles+of+the+earth%22&lr=&cd=1#v=onepage&q=%22you%20reptiles%20of%20the%20earth%22&f=false
Variant translation: God placed me on the throne, and you reptiles of the earth dare oppose me. I owe no account of my administration to the pope,— only to God and Jesus Christ.
As quoted in The Christian Observer, Volume 10, 1861, p. 261 http://books.google.com/books?id=mc8WAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA261&dq=%22you+reptiles+of+the+earth%22&lr=&cd=2#v=onepage&q=%22you%20reptiles%20of%20the%20earth%22&f=false

Martin Luther photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Don Marquis photo
Jules Verne photo

“The undulation of these infinite numbers of mountains, whose snowy summits make them look as if covered by foam, recalled to my remembrance the surface of a storm-beaten ocean. If I looked towards the west, the ocean lay before me in all its majestic grandeur, a continuation as it were, of these fleecy hilltops. Where the earth ended and the sea began it was impossible for the eye to distinguish.

I soon felt that strange and mysterious sensation which is awakened in the mind when looking down from lofty hilltops, and now I was able to do so without any feeling of nervousness, having fortunately hardened myself to that kind of sublime contemplation. I wholly forgot who I was, and where I was. I became intoxicated with a sense of lofty sublimity, without thought of the abysses into which my daring was soon about to plunge me.”

<p>Les ondulations de ces montagnes infinies, que leurs couches de neige semblaient rendre écumantes, rappelaient à mon souvenir la surface d'une mer agitée. Si je me retournais vers l'ouest, l'Océan s'y développait dans sa majestueuse étendue, comme une continuation de ces sommets moutonneux. Où finissait la terre, où commençaient les flots, mon oeil le distinguait à peine.</p><p>Je me plongeais ainsi dans cette prestigieuse extase que donnent les hautes cimes, et cette fois, sans vertige, car je m'accoutumais enfin à ces sublimes contemplations. Mes regards éblouis se baignaient dans la transparente irradiation des rayons solaires, j'oubliais qui j'étais, où j'étais, pour vivre de la vie des elfes ou des sylphes, imaginaires habitants de la mythologie scandinave; je m'enivrais de la volupté des hauteurs, sans songer aux abîmes dans lesquels ma destinée allait me plonger avant peu.</p>
Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Ch. XVI: Boldly down the crater

Aurelius Augustinus photo

“How, then, shall I respond to him who asks, “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” I do not answer, as a certain one is reported to have done facetiously (shrugging off the force of the question). “He was preparing hell,” he said, “for those who pry too deep.” It is one thing to see the answer; it is another to laugh at the questioner--and for myself I do not answer these things thus. More willingly would I have answered, “I do not know what I do not know,” than cause one who asked a deep question to be ridiculed--and by such tactics gain praise for a worthless answer.”
Ecce respondeo dicenti, 'quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram?' respondeo non illud quod quidam respondisse perhibetur, ioculariter eludens quaestionis violentiam: 'alta,' inquit, 'scrutantibus gehennas parabat.' aliud est videre, aliud ridere: haec non respondeo. libentius enim responderim, 'nescio quod nescio' quam illud unde inridetur qui alta interrogavit et laudatur qui falsa respondit.

Ecce respondeo dicenti, 'quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram?' respondeo non illud quod quidam respondisse perhibetur, ioculariter eludens quaestionis violentiam: 'alta,' inquit, 'scrutantibus gehennas parabat.'
aliud est videre, aliud ridere: haec non respondeo. libentius enim responderim, 'nescio quod nescio' quam illud unde inridetur qui alta interrogavit et laudatur qui falsa respondit.
Book XI, Chapter XII; translation by E.B. Pusey
Confessions (c. 397)

Ban Ki-moon photo
Albert Camus photo
Friedrich Schiller photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“Let us be aware that while they [the Soviet leadership] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”

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

Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals (8 March 1983)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Thomas Paine photo
Laozi photo
Barack Obama photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“The earth is my altar, the sky is my dome, mind is my garden, the heart is my home and I'm always at home — yea, I'm always at Om.”

Eden ahbez (1908–1995) American songwriter and recording artist

Tape recording to Joe Romersa
Shadowbox Studio

Barack Obama photo
Thomas De Quincey photo

“It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.”

Pt. II, Recalling the day in 1804 when he first took opium.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

Max Planck photo
William Empson photo

“Your rights reach down where all owners meet, in Hell's
Pointed exclusive conclave, at earth’s centre
(Your spun farm's root still on that axis dwells);
And up, through galaxies, a growing sector.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Legal Fiction", line 9; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 37.
The Complete Poems

Nathan Bedford Forrest photo

“There is no doubt we could soon wipe old Sherman off the face of the earth, John, if they'd give me enough men and you enough guns.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

To Captain John Morton, 1864. As quoted in May I Quote You, General Forrest? by Randall Bedwell.
1860s

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Jules Verne photo

“The moon, by her comparative proximity, and the constantly varying appearances produced by her several phases, has always occupied a considerable share of the attention of the inhabitants of the earth.”

L’astre des nuits, par sa proximité relative et le spectacle rapidement renouvelé de ses phases diverses, a tout d’abord partagé avec le Soleil l’attention des habitants de la Terre.
Source: From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Ch. V: The Romance of the Moon

Robert Baden-Powell photo

“Here is the hatchet of war, of enmity, of bad feeling, which I now bury in Arrowe," said the Chief, at the same time plunging a hatchet in the midst of a barrel of golden arrows."

"From all corners of the earth," said the Chief as soon as the cheering had subsided "you have journeyed to this great gathering of World Fellowship and Brotherhood. Today I send you out from Arrowe to all the World, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship, each one of you my ambassador bearing my message of Love and Fellowship on the wings of Sacrifice and Service, to the end of the Earth. From now on the Scout symbol of Peace is the Golden Arrow. Carry it fast and far so that all men may know the Brotherhood of Man."

"To THE NORTH—From the Northlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homelands across the great North Seas as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World."
"I bid you farewell."

"TO THE SOUTH—From the Southland you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homes under the Southern Cross as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World."
"I bid you farewell."

"TO THE WEST—From the Westlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homes in the Great Westlands to the Pacific and beyond as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World."
"I bid you farewell."

"TO THE EAST—From the Eastlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood."
"Today I send you back to your homes under the Starry Skies and Burning Suns to your people of the thousand years, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship to the Nations of the Earth, pledging you to keep my trust.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

"I bid you farewell."
Burying the Hatchet - BP Closing Address at the 3rd World Jamboree, Arrowe Park, 12 August 1929

Aurelius Augustinus photo
Anacreon photo

“The black earth drinks, in turn
The trees drink up the earth.
The sea the torrents drinks, the sun the sea,
And the moon drinks the sun.
Why, comrades, do ye flout me,
If I, too, wish to drink?”

Anacreon (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns

Variant: Fruitful earth drinks up the rain, Trees from earth drink that again; The sea too drinks the air, the sun Drinks the sea, and him the moon. Is it reason, then, do ye think, That I should thirst when all else drink?
Source: Odes, 21.

Leonardo DiCaprio photo
Nikolai Gogol photo
Rāmabhadrācārya photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“I am Love: in heaven and earth I have no place;
I am the Wondrous Phoenix whose spoor cannot be traced.”

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi (1213–1289) Persian philosopher

Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes (1982)

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“But what changes come upon the weary desert of our culture, so darkly described, when it is touched by the magic of Dionysus! A storm seizes everything decrepit, rotten, broken, stunted; shrouds it in a whirling red cloud of dust and carries it into the air like a vulture. In vain confusion we seek for all that has vanished; for what we see has risen as if from beneath he earth into the gold light, so full and green, so luxuriantly alive, immeasurable and filled with yearning. Tragedy sits in sublime rapture amidst this abundance of life, suffering and delight, listening to a far-off, melancholy song which tells of the Mothers of Being, whose names are Delusion, Will, Woe. -
Yes, my friends, join me in my faith in this Dionysiac life and the rebirth of tragedy. The age of Socratic man is past: crown yourselves with ivy, grasp the thyrsus and do not be amazed if tigers and panthers lie down fawning at your feet. Now dare to be tragic men, for you will be redeemed. You shall join the Dionysiac procession from India to Greece! Gird yourselves for a hard battle, but have faith in the miracles of your god!”

Aber wie verändert sich plötzlich jene eben so düster geschilderte Wildniss unserer ermüdeten Cultur, wenn sie der dionysische Zauber berührt! Ein Sturmwind packt alles Abgelebte, Morsche, Zerbrochne, Verkümmerte, hüllt es wirbelnd in eine rothe Staubwolke und trägt es wie ein Geier in die Lüfte. Verwirrt suchen unsere Blicke nach dem Entschwundenen: denn was sie sehen, ist wie aus einer Versenkung an's goldne Licht gestiegen, so voll und grün, so üppig lebendig, so sehnsuchtsvoll unermesslich. Die Tragödie sitzt inmitten dieses Ueberflusses an Leben, Leid und Lust, in erhabener Entzückung, sie horcht einem fernen schwermüthigen Gesange - er erzählt von den Müttern des Seins, deren Namen lauten: Wahn, Wille, Wehe.
Ja, meine Freunde, glaubt mit mir an das dionysische Leben und an die Wiedergeburt der Tragödie. Die Zeit des sokratischen Menschen ist vorüber: kränzt euch mit Epheu, nehmt den Thyrsusstab zur Hand und wundert euch nicht, wenn Tiger und Panther sich schmeichelnd zu euren Knien niederlegen. Jetzt wagt es nur, tragische Menschen zu sein: denn ihr sollt erlöst werden. Ihr sollt den dionysischen Festzug von Indien nach Griechenland geleiten! Rüstet euch zu hartem Streite, aber glaubt an die Wunder eures Gottes!
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 98

Stephen Hawking photo
Voltaire photo
Matka Tereza photo

“If I ever become a Saint — I surely be one of "darkness". I will continually be absent from Heaven — to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

As quoted in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2007) http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=189 by Brian Kolodiejchuk <!-- *If I ever become a saint, I will surely be one of 'darkness'. I will be absent from heaven for those in darkness on earth.
-->
2000s

Joseph Goebbels photo
Stefan Zweig photo
Aurelius Augustinus photo

“In a quarrel for earth, turn not to earth.”

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

First Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 267
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John (414)

Isaac Newton photo

“In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the method of approximating Series and the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Binomial into such a series. The same year in May I found the method of tangents of Gregory and Slusius, and in November had the direct method of Fluxions, and the next year in January had the Theory of Colours, and in May following I had entrance into the inverse method of Fluxions. And the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon, and having found out how to estimate the force with which [a] globe revolving within a sphere presses the surface of the sphere, from Kepler's Rule of the periodical times of the Planets being in a sesquialterate proportion of their distances from the centers of their orbs I deduced that the forces which keep the Planets in their Orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about which they revolve: and thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, and found them answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two plague years of 1665 and 1666, for in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention, and minded Mathematicks and Philosophy more than at any time since. What Mr Hugens has published since about centrifugal forces I suppose he had before me. At length in the winter between the years 1676 and 1677 I found the Proposition that by a centrifugal force reciprocally as the square of the distance a Planet must revolve in an Ellipsis about the center of the force placed in the lower umbilicus of the Ellipsis and with a radius drawn to that center describe areas proportional to the times. And in the winter between the years 1683 and 1684 this Proposition with the Demonstration was entered in the Register book of the R. Society. And this is the first instance upon record of any Proposition in the higher Geometry found out by the method in dispute. In the year 1689 Mr Leibnitz, endeavouring to rival me, published a Demonstration of the same Proposition upon another supposition, but his Demonstration proved erroneous for want of skill in the method.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

(ca. 1716) A Catalogue of the Portsmouth Collection of Books and Papers Written by Or Belonging to Sir Isaac Newton https://books.google.com/books?id=3wcjAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR18 (1888) Preface
Also partially quoted in Sir Sidney Lee (ed.), The Dictionary of National Biography Vol.40 http://books.google.com/books?id=NycJAAAAIAAJ (1894)

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“Death is a bend in the road,
To die is to slip out of view.
If I listen, I hear your steps
Existing as I exist.

The earth is made of heaven.
Error has no nest.
No one has ever been lost.
All is truth and way.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

<p>A morte é a curva da estrada,
Morrer é só não ser visto.
Se escuto, eu te oiço a passada
Existir como eu existo.</p><p>A terra é feita de céu.
A mentira não tem ninho.
Nunca ninguém se perdeu.
Tudo é verdade e caminho.</p>
"A morte é a curva da estrada" (23 May 1932), in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)

Voltaire photo

“Paradise on earth is where I am.”

Le paradis terrestre est où je suis.
Le Mondain (1736)
Citas

Barack Obama photo

“But he understood that it is better to live to the very end of his time on Earth with a longing not for the past but for the dreams that have not yet come true -- an Israel that is secure in a just and lasting peace with its neighbors.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at Memorial Service for Former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, Israel. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/30/remarks-president-obama-memorial-service-former-israeli-president-shimon (30 September 2016)
2016

Lavrentiy Beria photo

“By psychopolitics create chaos. Leave a nation leaderless. Kill our enemies. And bring to Earth, through Communism, the greatest peace Man has ever known.”

Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953) Georgian Soviet NKVD police chief under fellow Georgian and Soviet leader Stalin

Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics

Henri Barbusse photo
Galileo Galilei photo
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic Party, in regard to slavery”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Fifth Lincoln-Douglas Debate http://www.bartleby.com/251/pages/page328.html (7 October 1858), regarding Stephen A. Douglas and the antebellum Democratic Party's claim that African Americans were exempt from Thomas Jefferson's assertion that all men were created equal.
1850s, Lincoln–Douglas debates (1858)
Context: The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument, to suppose that negroes were meant therein; and he asks you: Is it possible to believe that Mister Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself applying the language of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them? I only have to remark upon this part of the Judge's speech, and that, too, very briefly, for I shall not detain myself, or you, upon that point for any great length of time, that I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic Party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation. And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience that while Mister Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject he used the strong language that “he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just;” and I will offer the highest premium in my power to Judge Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, ever uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson.

Oliver Cowdery photo

“I shall not attempt to paint to you the feelings of this heart, nor the majestic beauty and glory which surrounded us on this occasion; but you will believe me when I say, that earth, nor men, with the eloquence of time, cannot begin to clothe language in as interesting and sublime a manner as this holy personage. No; nor has this earth power to give the joy, to bestow the peace, or comprehend the wisdom which was contained in each sentence as they were delivered by the power of the Holy Spirit! Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind. The assurance that we were in the presence of an angel, the certainty that we heard the voice of Jesus, and the truth unsullied as it flowed from a pure personage, dictated by the will of God, is to me past description, and I shall ever look upon this expression of the Savior’s goodness with wonder and thanksgiving while I am permitted to tarry; and in those mansions where perfection dwells and sin never comes, I hope to adore in that day which shall never cease.”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Letter from Oliver Cowder to W.W. Phelps (Letter I), (September 7, 1834). Published in Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate, Vol. I. No. 1. Kirtland, Ohio, October, 1834. Published in Letters by Oliver Cowdery to W.W. Phelps on the Rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Liverpool, 1844.

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Bruce Lee photo

“Taoist philosophy … is essentially monistic. … Matter and energy, Yang and Yin, heaven and earth, are conceived of as essentially one or as two coexistent poles of one indivisible whole.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 23

Nathan Bedford Forrest photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

L'égalité sera peut-être un droit, mais aucune puissance humaine ne saura le convertir en fait.
La Duchesse de Langeais http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Duchesse_de_Langeais (1834), translated by Ellen Marriage, part II.

Aurelius Augustinus photo
Jules Verne photo

“The Earth does not want new continents, but new men.”

Ce ne sont pas de nouveaux continents qu'il faut à la terre, mais de nouveaux hommes!
Part I, ch. XVIII: Vanikoro (Boston: Geo. M. Smith & Co., 1873, p. 101) (Ch. XIX in the French text)
Tr. Walter James Miller (1966)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
Variant: The planet doesn't need new continents, it needs new men.

Morrissey photo

“Oh, the alcoholic afternoons
when we sat in your room
they meant more to me
than any, than any living thing on earth”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the song "These Things Take Time"
From songs

Maurice Maeterlinck photo
Plato photo
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon photo

“[F]rom the earliest periods of time [man] alone has divided the empire of the world between him and Nature. …[H]e rather enjoys than possesses, and it is by constant and perpetual activity and vigilance that he preserves his advantage, for if those are neglected every thing languishes, changes, and returns to the absolute dominion of Nature. She resumes her power, destroys the operations of man; envelopes with moss and dust his most pompous monuments, and in the progress of time entirely effaces them, leaving man to regret having lost by his negligence what his ancestors had acquired by their industry. Those periods in which man loses his empire, those ages in which every thing valuable perishes, commence with war and are completed by famine and depopulation. Although the strength of man depends solely upon the union of numbers, and his happiness is derived from peace, he is, nevertheless, so regardless of his own comforts as to take up arms and to fight, which are never-failing sources of ruin and misery. Incited by insatiable avarice, or blind ambition, which is still more insatiable, he becomes callous to the feelings of humanity; regardless of his own welfare, his whole thoughts turn upon the destruction of his own species, which he soon accomplishes. The days of blood and carnage over, and the intoxicating fumes of glory dispelled, he beholds, with a melancholy eye, the earth desolated, the arts buried, nations dispersed, an enfeebled people, the ruins of his own happiness, and the loss of his real power.”

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) French natural historian

Buffon's Natural History (1797) Vol. 10, pp. 340-341 https://books.google.com/books?id=respAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA340, an English translation of Histoire Naturelle (1749-1804).

Ovid photo

“O impious use! to Nature's laws oppos'd,
Where bowels are in other bowels clos'd:
Where fatten'd by their fellow's fat, they thrive;
Maintain'd by murder, and by death they live.
'Tis then for nought, that Mother Earth provides
The stores of all she shows, and all she hides,
If men with fleshy morsels must be fed,
And chaw with bloody teeth the breathing bread:
What else is this, but to devour our guests,
And barb'rously renew Cyclopean feasts!
We, by destroying life, our life sustain;
And gorge th' ungodly maw with meats obscene.”

Heu quantum scelus est in viscera viscera condi ingestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus alteriusque animans animantis vivere leto! Scilicet in tantis opibus, quas, optima matrum, terra parit, nil te nisi tristia mandere saevo vulnera dente iuvat ritusque referre Cyclopum, nec, nisi perdideris alium, placare voracis et male morati poteris ieiunia ventris!

Book XV, 88–95 (from Wikisource)
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Thomas à Kempis photo
Barack Obama photo
John Napier photo
Barack Obama photo
Aurelius Augustinus photo

“On Ps 60:3: “To Thee have I cried from the ends of the earth.””

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

On the Mystical Body of Christ

Barack Obama photo

“They call it Armageddon, the end of freedom as we know it. After I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling, some cracks opening up in the earth. Turned out it was a nice day.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

At a speech http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpps/news/dpgonc-obama-dares-republicans-to-run-on-repealing-health-care-fc-20100325_6751762 at the University of Iowa after signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (25 March 2010)
2010

Eddie Vedder photo

“JG: Can I ask what your feelings are about God?
EV: Sure. I think it's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything. Man lived on the planet -- [placing his fingers an inch apart], this is 5000 years of semi-recorded history. And God and the Bible, that came in somewhere around the middle, maybe 2000. This is the last 2000, this is what we're about to celebrate [indicating about an 1/8th of an inch with his fingers]. Now, humans, in some shape or form, have been on the earth for three million years [pointing across the room to indicate the distance]. So, all this time, from there [gesturing toward the other side of the room], to here [indicating the 1/8th of an inch], there was no God, there was no story, there was no myth and people lived on this planet and they wandered and they gathered and they did all these things. The planet was never threatened. How did they survive for all this time without this belief in God? I'd like to ask this to someone who knows about Christianity and maybe you do. That just seems funny to me… (sic) Funny strange. Funny bad. Funny frown. Not good. That laws are made and wars occur because of this story that was written, again, in this small part of time.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

March 23, 1998, Janeane Garofalo interviewing Eddie Vedder for CMJ New Music Report at Brendan's, on the Lower East Side.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
John Keats photo

“Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

" Ode http://www.bartleby.com/126/44.html", The Fair Maid of the Inn
Poems (1820)

Alberto Moravia photo

“In the beginning was boredom, commonly called chaos. God, bored with boredom, created the earth, the sky, the waters, the animals, the plants, Adam and Eve; and the latter, bored in their turn in paradise, ate the forbidden fruit. God became bored with them and drove them out of Eden.”

In principio, dunque, era la noia, volgarmente chiamata caos. Iddio, annoiandosi della noia, creò la terra, il cielo, l'acqua, gli animali, le piante, Adamo ed Èva; i quali ultimi, annoiandosi a loro volta in paradiso, mangiarono il frutto proibito. Iddio si annoiò di loro e li cacciò dall'Eden.
La noia (Milano: Bompiani, 1960) pp. 10-11; Angus Davidson (trans.) Boredom (New York: New York Review of Books, 1999) p. 8.

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“He held up his watch to sunlight, letting it drink in the wherewithal that was to solar watches what money was to Earth men.”

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 17)

Adunis photo

“New York is a woman
holding, according to history,
a rag called liberty with one hand
and strangling the earth with the other.”

Adunis (1930) Essayist, poet

"The Funeral of New York" (1971), from The Pages of Day and Night, trans. Samuel Hazo and Esther Allen (Northwestern University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-810-16081-1.

Kurt Vonnegut photo
Plato photo
Thomas Bradwardine photo

“O great and wonderful Lord our God, thou only light of the eyes, open, I implore thee, the eyes of my heart, and of others my fellow-creatures, that we may truly understand and contemplate thy wondrous works. And the more thoroughly we comprehend them, the more may our minds be affected in the contemplation with pious reverence and profound devotion. Who is not struck with awe in beholding thy all-powerful will completely efficacious throughout every part of the creation? It is by this same sovereign and irresistible will, that whom and when thou pleasest thou bringest low and liftest up, killest and makest alive. How intense and how unbounded is thy love to me, O Lord! whereas my love, how feeble and remiss! my gratitude, how cold and inconstant! Far be it from thee that thy love should even resemble mine; for in every kind of excellence thou art consummate. O thou who fillest heaven and earth, why fillest thou not this narrow heart? O human soul, low, abject, and miserable, whoever thou art, if thou be not fully replenished with the love of so great a good, why dost thou not open all thy doors, expand all thy folds, extend all thy capacity, that, by the sweetness of love so great, thou mayest be wholly occupied, satiated, and ravished; especially since, little as thou art, thou canst not be satisfied with the love of any good inferior to the One supreme? Speak the word, that thou mayest become my God and most enviable in mine eyes, and it shall instantly be so, without the possibility of failure. What can be more efficacious to engage the affection than preventing love? Most gracious Lord, by thy love thou hast prevented me, wretch that I am, who had no love for thee, but was at enmity with my Maker and Redeemer. I see, Lord, that it is easy to say and to write these things, but very difficult to execute them. Do thou, therefore, to whom nothing is difficult, grant that I may more easily practise these things with my heart than utter them with my lips. Open thy liberal hand, that nothing may be easier, sweeter, or more delightful to me, than to be employed in these things. Thou, who preventest thy servants with thy gracious love, whom dost thou not elevate with the hope of finding thee?”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

Sample of Bradwardine devotional writing quoted by James Burnes, The Church of England Magazine under the superintendence of clergymen of the United Church of England and Ireland Vol. IV (January to June 1838)

Aurelius Augustinus photo
Antonin Artaud photo
Nikola Tesla photo
Barack Obama photo
Ramana Maharshi photo
Homér photo

“I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before—
I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.”

XXIV. 505–506 (tr. Robert Fagles); Priam to Achilles.
Richmond Lattimore's translation:
: I have gone through what no other mortal on earth has gone through;
I put my lips to the hands of the man who has killed my children.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Ian Anderson photo