Quotes about soil (537 quotes, page 6) | Quotes of famous people

“Oh! The song of the future has been sung
All the battles have been won
On the mountain tops we stand
All the world at our command
We have opened up the soil with our teardrops and our toil”

Gordon Lightfoot (1938) Canadian singer-songwriter

Canadian Railroad Trilogy, Track 11, United Artists Watch it Here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjoU1Qkeizs
The Way I Feel (1967)
Context: There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
And the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real...
Oh! The song of the future has been sung
All the battles have been won
On the mountain tops we stand
All the world at our command
We have opened up the soil with our teardrops and our toil

World , Mountain , Future

“A SPRING
Long stalks of rain
are growing from the skies
down towards ash-black soil,
softer than deer hearts
frozen in concentration
at river banks

Everything that is not here
lies beyond these waters – more effusive
than a fisherman’s song,
when come evening time
they sail back to theirs rocky homes
settled at Shannon’s ridges
winding like a maggot in a downpour
and greener still
than eyes of women
that bear the same name”

Marcin Malek (1975) Polish writer

Diary of an unfinished journey (2012), Page 56, verse I-II.

Women , Home , Spring , Water

“ÉIRE (translation)
If I were the alpha and omega all at once
I could not love you more than now
Immature motherland of stray illusions
I'm grateful to feel your soil
and quench my thirst on your rivers”

Marcin Malek (1975) Polish writer

Call me an idiot (2012), pages 13-14

Love , Feeling

“Throughout the whole range of Urdu literature in its first phase… the atmosphere of this literature is provokingly un-Indian - it is that of Persia. Early Urdu poets never so much as mention the great physical features of India - its Himalayas, its rivers like the Ganges, the Jamuna, the Sindhu, the Godavari, etc; but of course mountains and streams of Persia, and rivers of Central Asia are always there. Indian flowers, Indian plants are unknown; only Persian flowers and plants which the poet could see only in a garden. There was a deliberate shutting of the eye to everything Indian, to everything not mentioned or treated in Persian poetry… A language and literature which came to base itself upon an ideology which denied on the Indian soil the very existence of India and Indian culture, could not but be met with a challenge from some of the Indian adherents of their national culture; and that challenge was in the form of highly Sanskritized Hindi’.”

Suniti Kumar Chatterji (1890–1977) Bengali linguist

S.K. Chatterjee quoted in Aziz Ahmad, Studies In Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, Oxford. 1964, pp. 252-55. https://archive.org/details/StudiesInIslamicCultureInTheIndianE

Mountain , Flowers , Literature

“We can hope that the ways of peace will attract the Arabic nations, for their territory and opportunities are broad enough for immeasurable advance, if the energies vented in spleen, are turned instead to a modernisation of the technology, a restoration of the soil, and a renovation of the economic, social, and political structure of those great and venerable lands.”

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

The Near East (1968), p. 260
General sources

Way , Peace , Hope

“We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave — to the ancient enemies of man — half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech to the UN Economic and Social Council, Geneva, Switzerland (9 July 1965)

Despair , Peace , Confidence , Dependency

“The rich scent of well-balanced soil was like incense.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Caliban's War (2012), Chapter 7 (p. 76)

“Our identity as a nation — unlike many other nations — is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. Being an American involves the embrace of high ideals and civic responsibility. We become the heirs of Thomas Jefferson by accepting the ideal of human dignity found in the Declaration of Independence. We become the heirs of James Madison by understanding the genius and values of the U. S. Constitution. We become the heirs of Martin Luther King, Jr., by recognizing one another not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. This means that people of every race, religion, and ethnicity can be fully and equally American. It means that bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed. And it means that the very identity of our nation depends on the passing of civic ideals to the next generation… Self-correction is the secret strength of freedom. We are a nation with a history of resilience and a genius for renewal.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks at Bush Institute Summit, "The Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In The World" at the Bush Institute Summit in New York City https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2YlVZxu_L0 (October 2017), as quoted in The Washington Post http://archive.is/jl9AF#selection-2115.0-2135.112 (October 2017)
2010s, 2017

Religion , History , Freedom , Understanding

“We are at war with a system, which, by it’s essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by it’s essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. To us it is a Colossus which bestrides our channel. It has one foot on a foreign shore, the other upon the British soil. Thus advantaged, if it can at all exist, it must finally prevail.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Source: Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796), p. 19

War , Peace , Making love , Country

“When we read Spinoza, we are seized with a feeling like that of seeing nature at its grandest in most vigorous repose: a forest of thoughts, tall as the sky, whose blooming tree-tops sway back and forth, while imperturbable trunks stand rooted in the eternal soil. There is a certain soft breeze in the writings of Spinoza which is inexplicable. It stirs the reader with the winds of the future. The spirit of the Hebrew prophets still rested perhaps on their late descendant. At the same time, there is a seriousness to him, a self-confident pride, a grandeur of thought which also seems to be an inheritance, since Spinoza belonged to one of those families of martyrs which had been expelled from Spain by those most Catholic kings.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Heinrich Heine, On the History of Philosophy and Religion and Other Writings [original in German]
G - L

Family , Confidence , Time , Tree

“His life was a unique case of a public figure who rose from the chairmanship of a village panchayat to the Rashtrapathi Bhavan. He rose literally from the soil of Jamkhandi in Bagalkot District where he started his public life as chairman of a village panchayat, and his was another name for simplicity and humility.”

Basappa Danappa Jatti (1912–2002) Indian politician

His simplicity survived rewards of public life

Life

“Art in India was never the same after her comet like appearance. There are only a few moments in the history of art which pinpoint a new departure, a new direction. Such a moment in the history of modern Indian art was the appearance in the mid-thirties of Amrita Sher-Gil with whose paintings contemporary paintnig in India took shape and demonstrated the possibility of a contemporary style and expression that were, at the same time, of the soil and in direct continuation of the great national past.”

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) Hungarian Indian artist

Ruby Von Leiden in amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941), 7 December 2013, Learnpunjabi.org http://www.learnpunjabi.org/eos/AMRITA%20SHER-GIL%20%281913-1941%29.html,

Time , Painting , History , Past

“Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear *fucking* weapons.”

Ken MacLeod (1954) Scottish science fiction writer

USENET posting to rec.sf.arts.fandom http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/browse_frm/thread/303b0da0ab25aee/b12adceacd343279 28 September 2000, in the discussion of Robert A. Heinlein's quote "The cowards never started and the weaklings died on the way." (Expanded Universe, How to be a Survivor in the Atomic Age)
Other sources

War , Fear , Children , Past

“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. … The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. … A land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 203-204.

Communication , Animals , Water , Parting

“Secrecy is the potting soil in which all this conspiracy shit grows. Trust me. The roaches don’t like it when you start shining a light on them.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 13 (p. 140)

Light

“All the people sick and dead on the ships, and the ones sick and dead on this soil. What are gods for, then, if they let things like this to happen to their people?”

Nalo Hopkinson book The Salt Roads

Source: The Salt Roads (2003), p. 66

Relation ships , God , People , Dead

“Freudianism and Feminism grew from the same soil. It is no accident that Freud began his work at the height of the early feminist movement.”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

Source: The Dialectic of Sex (1970), Chapter Three

“The law, as to preserve life is that of individuals, is a set of rules and practices … intended to appropriate to the law-makers the produce of those who cultivate the soil, prepare clothing, or distribute what is produced among the different classes, and among different communities.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832), p. 46

Clothes , Life , Law , Communication

“Prayers will be offered up for the success of our work in temples and in churches also; for it will bring relief from an old burden, which all have suffered.
But we must first bring enlightenment to men's minds. The idea must make its way into the most distant, miserable holes where our people dwell. They will awaken from gloomy brooding, for into their lives will come a new significance. Every man need think only of himself, and the movement will assume vast proportions.
And what glory awaits those who fight unselfishly for the cause!
Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again.
Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it.
We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.
The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness.
And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.”

Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) Austro-Hungarian journalist and writer

VI : Conclusion
Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State] (1896)

Home , Success , Wealth , Spring

“Heart is not free from love pain
Painless body is only soil and water
Everybody vecomes lover
O, there is no leveless heart in the worls.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

Joseph and Zuleika, p. 78
Poetry, Poetry from Joseph and Zuleika

Pain , Heart , Water , Lovers

“For the unbroken life of the English nation over a thousand years and more is a phenomenon unique in history. ... Institutions which elsewhere are recent and artificial creations, appear in England almost as works of nature, spontaneous and unquestioned. The deepest instinct of the Englishman—how the word “instinct” keeps forcing itself in again and again!—is for continuity; he never acts more freely nor innovates more boldly than when he most is conscious of conserving or even of reacting. From this continuous life of a united people in its island home spring, as from the soil of England, all that is peculiar in the gifts and the achievements of the English nation, its laws, its literature, its freedom, its self-discipline. ... And this continuous and continuing life of England is symbolised and expressed, as by nothing else, by the English kingship. English it is, for all the leeks and thistles and shamrocks, the Stuarts and the Hanoverians, for all the titles grafted upon it here and elsewhere, “her other realms and territories”, Headships of Commonwealths, and what not. The stock that received all these grafts is English, the sap that rises through it to the extremities rises from roots in English earth, the earth of England's history.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Royal Society of St George (22 April 1961), quoted in A Nation Not Afraid. The Thinking of Enoch Powell (1965), pp. 145–146

Home , Law , History , Freedom

“It’s really hard coming to L.A. as an Australian, you land on American soil and you start fresh. The profile you had in Australia doesn’t really matter; You start again.”

Ashleigh Brewer (1990) Australian actress

Source: THE BOLD & THE BEAUTIFUL’s Ivy — Get to Know Ashleigh Brewer! https://www.soapsindepth.com/posts/cbs/the-bold-and-the-beautiful-ashleigh-brewer-ivy-forrester-132580 (May 17, 2017)

“From the standpoint of economy alone, the diet of the fields and orchards ought to appeal successfully to every one possessed of undoubted sanity. One acre devoted to wheat will support ten times as many men as one devoted to grazing. If men would take the beautiful products of the soil fresh from Nature's hand, instead of sitting down and devouring, in the form of the accumulated residuum or ruminants^ an acre at a meal, the problems o human poverty and over-population would be immensely simplified.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), What Shall We Eat?, p. 92

Time , Support , Beauty , Nature

“In the Far East, compulsory labor can work wonders, just like here... If only Belgium wanted to see that. This could create "inexhaustible resources and exploiting the soil and peoples of the Far East can only be brought to civilization and well-being in this way."”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

ISBN 9789463962094 Prince Leopold II in a 1863 travel note in admiration for Ferdinand de Lesseps when visiting Egypt and the digging sites of the Suez Canal by tens of thousands of cheap workers.
Source: https://klara.be/leopold-ii-aflevering-3 Leopold II, Het hele Verhaal, Johan Op De Beeck Horizon, 2020

Way , People

“And I
in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —
and behind me the others: my brothers
forgotten since dawn. In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand years' layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)

Pain , Tear , Dead

“If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.”

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

Knowledge , Sense , Wisdom

“Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), Marriage and Love

Freedom , Universe , Law , Love

“The most beautiful gift of nature is a pleasant morning whenever I see this beautiful sight of nature I fall in love with nature. A pleasant morning brings with it different colors of nature. Just like the green trees and plants that make my eyes feel relaxed, the blue color of the sky signifies ambition, the yellow color of the sun lights the lamp of hope in me, the red and pink colors of flowers fill me with love, these I am surprised to see all the colours. The scent of the wet soil in the morning along with the cool breeze fills me with freshness. When i hear the sweet chirping of birds, my heart starts humming.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Flowers , Nature , Bird , Love

“As a first-generation immigrant, I want to make the soil richer. My kid will grow up in a free world without fear and will be thinking like an ordinary American. I envy him very much.”

Rebel Pepper (1973) Chinese political cartoonist

"Chinese political cartoonist Rebel Pepper finds more artistic freedom in the US" in The World https://theworld.org/stories/2018-07-02/chinese-political-cartoonist-rebel-pepper-finds-more-artistic-freedom-us (2 July 2018)

World , Fear , Thinking , Envy