Quotes about earth
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“God is willing to walk the earth again incarnate in us.”
Eugenia Price
(1916–1996) American writer
Source: Early Will I Seek Thee
Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 4 (p. 51)
Source: My Utmost for His Highest
“The most dangerous men on earth are those who are afraid they are wimps”
James Gilligan
American psychiatrist and author
Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Richard Halliburton
(1900–1939) American writer
The Royal Road to Romance (1925).
Context: Youth -- nothing else worth having in the world... and I had youth, the transitory, the fugitive, now, completely and abundantly. Yet what was I going to do with it? Certainly not squander its gold on the commonplace quest for riches and respectability, and then secretly lament the price that had to be paid for these futile ideals. Let those who wish have their respectability -- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous and the romantic.
“We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry.”
Jon Stewart
(1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian
“Sometimes he thought they were all forsaken, every soul on this earth.”
Cassandra Clare
(1973) American author
Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale
“What makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven.”
Chuck Palahniuk
book
Damned
Variant: No, it's not fair, but what makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven.
Source: Damned (2011)
Isaac Asimov
(1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.”
Herman Melville
(1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet
Variant: for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale
“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.”
George Carlin
(1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
“One day an army of gray-haired women may quietly take over the Earth!”
Gloria Steinem
(1934) American feminist and journalist
Tiffanie DeBartolo
(1970) American writer
Source: God-Shaped Hole
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“In God's eyes all children are beautiful but here on earth we have higher standards.”
Stephen Colbert
(1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor
“You are all that exists on the earth and under the sky that I do love.”
Variant: And I love you," Kieran said. "You are all that exists on the earth and under the sky that I do love.
Source: Lady Midnight
“Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?”
Steven Pressfield
(1943) United States Marine
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.”
Rod Serling
(1924–1975) American screenwriter
Eric Hoffer
(1898–1983) American philosopher
Section 32 <!-- also quoted in On Becoming a Leader (1989) by Warren G. Bennis, p. 189 -->
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Variant: In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Context: The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
“One needs no strange spiritual faith to worship the earth.”
John Cowper Powys
(1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher
“All Heaven and Earth
Flowered white obliterate…
Snow… unceasing snow”
Bashō Matsuo
(1644–1694) Japanese poet
Source: Japanese Haiku
“There's no place on earth with more dumb girls per square foot than a college in California.”
Roberto Bolaño
(1953–2003) Chilean author
Stephen Jay Gould
(1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist
Source: The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
“Sexual union is a holy moment in which a part of Heaven flows into the Earth.”
Source: The Celestine Prophecy
Terry Tempest Williams
(1955) American writer
Source: Finding Beauty in a Broken World
“We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.”
Source: The Selfish Gene
Walt Whitman
(1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist
From the Preface to the 1855 edition of <i>Leaves of Grass</i>
Context: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . .
Context: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.... The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured.... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches.... and shall master all attachment.
Dorothy Day
(1897–1980) Social activist
On Pilgrimage (1948)
Context: We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter. A certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. A family needs work as well as bread. Property is proper to man. We must keep repeating these things. Eternal life begins now. "All the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, "I am the Way." The cross is there, of course, but "in the cross is joy of spirit." And love makes all things easy.
“Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.”
Richard Bach
(1936) American spiritual writer
Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Variant: This is a test to see if your mission in this life is complete, if you are alive, it isn't.
Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story
“Some marriages are made in heaven, but they all have to be maintained on earth. Mrs Miracle”
Debbie Macomber
(1948) American writer
Source: Mrs. Miracle
Wendell Berry
(1934) author
Variant: The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
“Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”
Thomas Moore
(1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter
Albert Einstein
(1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
A comment to T. H. Morgan, as recalled by Henry Borsook. Einstein was visiting Cal Tech where Morgan and Borsook worked, and Morgan explained to Einstein that he was trying to bring physics and chemistry to bear on the problems of biology, to which Einstein gave this response. Borsook's recollection was published in Symposium on Structure of Enzymes and Proteins (1956), p. 284 http://books.google.com/books?id=H4QjXb4gnEIC&q=%22so+important+a+biological%22#search_anchor, as part of a piece titled "Informal remarks 'by way of a summary'". Context for this story is also given in The Molecular Vision of Life by Lily E. Kay (1993), p. 95 http://books.google.com/books?id=vEHeNI2a8OEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA95#v=onepage&q&f=false
Attributed in posthumous publications
Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 30, Colonel Sanders
Frank O'Hara
(1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island (l. 64-67) (1958).
“Blessed are the idiots, for they are happiest people on earth.”
Source: Bridge of Birds
“And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
Raymond Carver
(1938–1988) American short story author and poet
“We all arrive on Earth with a round-trip ticket.”
Richard Paul Evans
(1962) American writer
Source: The Gift
“You weren't put on earth to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity.”
Rick Warren
(1954) Christian religious leader
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth am I Here For?
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.
Anne Lamott
(1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
“When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”
George A. Romero
(1940–2017) American-Canadian film director, film producer, screenwriter and editor
Source: Dawn of the Dead
