Quotes About Earth

After that there was silence for a while, only the sound of the shovel biting into the earth and the hissing splatter of the loose dirt. They stood him up, his back to the well. In the dark, desperate sky, just above the scalloped line the treetops made, three stars formed a pleading little constellation. No one looked at them, no one cared. This was the time for death, not the time for mercy. ("The Number's Up")

One of them hasn't got a uniform on or plainclothes either like the rest. He has on the white coat that is my nightmare and my horror. And in the crotch of one arm he is upending two long poles intertwined with canvas. The long-drawn-out death within life. The burial-alive of the mind, covering it over with fresh graveyard earth each time it tries to struggle through to the light. In this kind of death you never finish dying. ("New York Blues")

This is the yin and yang of the earth, an energetic feedback. What happens below relates directly to what is happening on the surface and in the atmosphere and vice versa. Tectonics does not end at the ground beneath your feet. It is a dynamic system from the earth's interior all the way into the sky and back.

I've often thought that a planet without water would be a dull, sad place. Most, if not all, water on this planet came from countless small comets thumping against the atmosphere (which continues at about ten thousand comets or pieces of comets per day, enough to add a twenty-five-foot depth of water across the entire globe every half a million years). That it comes from space suggests why it is so peculiar and fascinating here on earth. It is a substance from far beyond our reach.

O, the sorrow of us all, to wander the earth in a shell. And looking to the heavens, we lay to rest in hell. The suffering of the innocent in the midst of Jacob's well. How the miles fled between us, and that distance is still great. Though on the same shore we now sit, in temporal quietude to wait. The moon is our bright witness; it will lead us to the gate.

Look out there, my little princess," he called down to her. "These plants are only the very tip of the earth's treasures, almost like hairs on her head. She hides so many other secrets deep within her, and one day, if you're lucky, you may find some of them.

This unholy masquerade when reality does fade, the imprint of the God on our mortal-stained facade. Saints and spirits strip the earth of the straining hope of birth. "Kill the hope with grasping grave," cries the earthly mortal slave.

Earth is not heaven. It was never meant to be. No new car, new house, new living room furniture, new kitchen appliances, new clothes, new hair, new baby, new vacation, new job, new income, new husband, or new anything will ever satisfy us, because we were not made for the things of this world.

Oh heart! Oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best.     "Love Among the Ruins," Robert Browning, 1885

Un pezzo di cielo caduto in terra

A butte is taller than it is wide, whereas a mesa, like this one, is wider than it is tall.

One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.

We are spiritual beings here to experience physical reality, and isn't that a grand event to celebrate? Unfortunately, most of us are taught that the everyday world is less holy than the one located in the heavens. The truth is, all of earth is an altar to goodness, but the path to living in a sacred and joyful manner must be chosen with wisdom. And wisdom is often hard earned.

What's exceptional about our blue marble is not that we had water. It's that we held on to it, and that we still do. While the ancient oceans of Venus and Mars vaporized into space, Earth kept its life-giving water. Luckily for us, the forecast called for rain.

For the first half-billion years, Earth was a molten inferno some 8,000 degrees Celsius—hotter than today's sun. Scientists call this violent era the Hadean, from the Greek word Hades, or hell. Time and again, the young Earth built up a crust, only to see it incinerated by storms of flaming meteors.

In November, the earth is growing quiet. It is making its bed, a winter bed for flowers and small creatures. The bed is white and silent, and much life can hide beneath its blankets.

The atmosphere is only about .035 percent carbon dioxide,

Man [as Bill often said] is a virus in shoes.

Earth, what have I to do with thee? With your meadows where dumb beasts Grazed before the deluge without lifting their heads? What have I to do with your implacable births? So why this gracious melancholia? Is it because anger is no use?

This I wanted and nothing more. In my old age like old Goethe to stand before the face of the earth, and recognize it and reconcile it with my work built up, a forest citadel on a river of changeable lights and brief shadows.

We and the flowers throw shadows on the earth. What has no shadow has no strength to live

If you are a human being in modern society on planet Earth, you need money to do pretty much everything, especially to grow into a more expansive version of yourself.

The reason we have the stars twinkle at night is because the light is being kind of blurred by the atmosphere around the Earth. That is why the Hubble Space Telescope is so good, because it is above the atmosphere. So it is kind of like looking at the sun from the bottom of a swimming pool, versus looking at the sun above the swimming pool.

Reduced to its lowest terms, the great struggle which now rocks the whole earth more and more takes on the character of a struggle of the individual versus the state.