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2854058 Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed. earth man greed inspirational indulgence conservation environment bounty need Mahatma Gandhi
f03a744 Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. earth humour unfashionable watches primitive cosmology galaxy digital perspective Douglas Adams
3e45173 Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. lover words earth poetry reason imagination fantasy love devils egypt helen lunatic madmen poet Shakespeare William Shakespeare
c975a16 Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. fish earth man loss nature world wonder past parable brooks glens environment trout mystery destruction creation maps Cormac McCarthy
2e69861 The first men to be created and formed were called the Sorcerer of Fatal Laughter, the Sorcerer of Night, Unkempt, and the Black Sorcerer ... They were endowed with intelligence, they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When they looked, instantly they saw all that is around them, and they contemplated in turn the arc of heaven and the round face of the earth ... [Then the Creator said]: 'They know all ... what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to that which is near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth!... Are they not by nature simple creatures of our making? Must they also be gods? earth heaven intelligence sight creation-myth gods knowledge Anonymous
f9dcbbd If I were rain, That joins sky and earth that otherwise never touch, Could I join two hearts as well? earth rain quote love orihime-inoue sky hearts manga Tite Kubo
240b7c0 Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. God's already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn't pay Him for what He's done for me. a-w-tozer millenniums earth worship prayer god life truth inspirational million the-truth pay ages done A.W. Tozer
7fd8913 We rich nations, for that is what we are, have an obligation not only to the poor nations, but to all the grandchildren of the world, rich and poor earth science inspirational environmentalism conservation Moss Cass
d8155a9 Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes. earth save dishes help mom P.J. O'Rourke
266e73f It's funny. When we were alive we spent much of our time staring up at the cosmos and wondering what was out there. We were obsessed with the moon and whether we could one day visit it. The day we finally walked on it was celebrated worldwide as perhaps man's greatest achievement. But it was while we were there, gathering rocks from the moon's desolate landscape, that we looked up and caught a glimpse of just how incredible our own planet was. Its singular astonishing beauty. We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry. earth moon space Jon Stewart
54870a4 If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, just watch the sunrise. earth world religion god lord sunrise Jeannette Walls
32fc77f A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being? earth science space-exploration Carl Sagan
544ffb6 We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in 's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road -- the one less traveled by -- offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth. earth poem nature poetry robert-frost frost preservation environment survival Rachel Carson
5ed5bfd National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. earth science astronomy folly nationalism space conceit pride human-nature Carl Sagan
18dc7a3 When I consider that the nobler animal have been exterminated here - the cougar, the panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, dear, the beaver, the turkey and so forth and so forth, I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed and, as it were, emasculated country... Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature I am conversing with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all it's warriors...I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth. earth nature conservation woods Henry David Thoreau
6c5dda1 "Thats what happens to Snow in Texas, lady. It freaking MELTS!!" Leo Valdez- The Lost Hero" earth heroes heo melts of-olympus valdez freak texas leo jackson percy rick-riordan lady hilarious lost snow Rick Riordan
85de880 The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large. earth world truth lousy manufactured planet kurt-vonnegut destruction Kurt Vonnegut
f567eea That is the earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of a hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upwards from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets, and winds, and birds earth nature life revelations Orson Scott Card
3f2133f She already felt dead in everything but name. What remained to be taken from her? She longed to be enfolded, welcomed, into the earth - to breathe no more, love no more, hurt no more sleep suicide earth lost Alan Brennert
b36e9ad The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to to forget all that. Don't you agree? Two-thirds of earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface: the skin. earth jellyfish surfaces deep Haruki Murakami
e538851 "Earth without earth Mysterious Anonymous and Unknown
c846367 As long as there is one person suffering an injustice; as long as one person is forced to bear an unnecessary sorrow; as long as one person is subject to an undeserved pain, the worship of a God is a demoralizing humiliation. As long as there is one mistake in the universe; as long as one wrong is permitted to exist; as long as there is hatred and antagonism among mankind, the existence of a God is a moral impossibility. said: 'Injustice upon earth renders the justice of of heaven impossible. mankind hatred universe injustice earth pain suffering wrong sorrow morality ingersoll robert-g-ingersoll robert-green-ingersoll robert-ingersoll impossibility mistake justice Joseph Lewis
1b83f20 ...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them. sleep suicide earth escape depression sorrow fear mother misery terror horror Fyodor Dostoyevsky
d12409a You do what you have to do to give people closure; it makes them feel better and it doesn't cost you much to do it. I'd rather apologize for something I didn't really care about, and leave someone on Earth wishing me well, than to be stubborn and have that someone hoping that some alien would slurp out my brains. Call it karmic insurance. apologize karmic earth people care feel closure well cost stubborn insurance John Scalzi
39006e1 Although the surface of our planet is two-thirds water, we call it the Earth. We say we are earthlings, not waterlings. Our blood is closer to seawater than our bones to soil, but that's no matter. The sea is the cradle we all rocked out of, but it's to dust that we go. From the time that water invented us, we began to seek out dirt. The further we separate ourselves from the dirt, the further we separate ourselves from ourselves. Alienation is a disease of the unsoiled. earth another-roadside-attraction tom-robbins soil dirt amanda water Tom Robbins
d43e6c5 The way I see it, the difference between farmers and suburbanites is the difference in the way we feel about dirt. To them, the earth is something to be respected and preserved, but dirt gets no respect. A farmer likes dirt. Suburbanites like to get rid of it. Dirt is the working layer of earth, and dealing with dirt is as much a part of farm life as dealing with manure. Neither is user-friendly but both are necessary. earth E.L. Konigsburg
51e9c93 Quand on a termine sa toilette du matin, il faut faire soigneusement la toilette de la planete. earth environmental-protection environment Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
ac82837 "And we're not alone, you know, children," came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. "All through the universe, it's being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it's a grand and exciting battle. I know it's hard for you to understand about size, how there's very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy. You think about that, and maybe it won't seem strange to you that some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it's a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy. You can be proud that it's done so well." "Who have our fighters been? Calvin asked. "Oh, you must know them, dear," Mrs. Whatsit said. Mrs. Who's spectacles shone out at them triumphantly. "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." "Jesus!" Charles Wallace said. "Why of course, Jesus!" "Of course!" Mrs. Whatsit said. "Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They've been lights for us to see by." mankind earth light jesus god Madeleine L'Engle
de1c914 "You're innocent until proven guilty," Mandy exclaimed, unable to hide her gleeful smile. She missed the way people used to have normal conversations, used to be more caring for each other than themselves, back in the Seventies and Eighties. These days, she realized, neighbors kept to themselves, their kids kept to themselves, nobody talked to each other anymore. They went to work, went shopping and shut themselves up at home in front of glowing computer screens and cellphones... but maybe the nostalgic, better times in her life would stay buried, maybe the world would never be what it was. In the 21st century music was bad, movies were bad, society was failing and there were very few intelligent people left who missed the way things used to be... maybe though, Mandy could change things. Thinking back to the old home movies in her basement, she recalled what Alecto had told her. "We wanted more than anything else in the world to be normal, but we failed." The 1960's and 1970's were very strange times, but Mandy missed it all, she missed the days when Super-8 was the popular film type, when music had lyrics that made you think, when movies had powerful meanings instead of bad comedy and when people would just walk to a friend's house for the afternoon instead of texting in bed all day. She missed soda fountains and department stores and non-biodegradable plastic grocery bags, she wished cellphones, bad pop music and LED lights didn't exist... she hated how everything had a diagnosis or pill now, how people who didn't fit in with modern, lazy society were just prescribed medications without a second thought... she hated how old, reliable cars were replaced with cheap hybrid vehicles... she hated how everything could be done online, so that people could just ignore each other... the world was becoming much more convenient, but at the same time, less human, and her teenage life was considered nostalgic history now. Hanging her head low, avoiding the slightly confused stare of the cab driver through the rear view mirror, she started crying uncontrollably, her tears soaking the collar of her coat as the sun blared through the windows in a warm light." earth grief loss death convenient old-school reporter taxi retro cape-breton nova-scotia stuck moving digital medications leaving-home environment canada cars stop crying gone misery trapped lonely sad crazy insane dying mental-illness nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
aa6f23d The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. 'If I am the wisest man,' said Socrates, 'it is because I alone know that I know nothing.' The implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal. Alas, none of this was new to me. (There is very little that is new to me; I wish my correspondents would realize this.) This particular theme was addressed to me a quarter of a century ago by John Campbell, who specialized in irritating me. He also told me that all theories are proven wrong in time. My answer to him was, 'John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. understanding universe earth wrong theory science wisdom flat-earth scientific-theory socrates relativity ignorance knowledge greece Isaac Asimov
81308e6 O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies. suicide earth poem poetry christianity death the-virgin-suicides rebirth funeral Jeffrey Eugenides
6169337 The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it? Perhaps soon humanity would simply flicker out, but Kirsten found this thought more peaceful than sad. So many species had appeared and later vanished from this earth; what was one more? How many people were even left now? earth humanity extinction Emily St. John Mandel
efd305b Alford, Massachusetts: Mandy stood there with her old Nikon film camera, snapping photo after photo of the rural landscape. It was difficult to describe the wonderful feeling of there not being a single cell phone in sight; the only modern technology around was the faint blue glow of a cathode ray tube television in the window of a nearby house, and a few cars and trucks parked in crumbling gravel driveways. She was allowed to see this place, one that would likely be ruined by the 21st century as time went on... places like these were extremely hard to find these days. A world of wood-burning cookstoves and the waxy smell of Paraffin, laundry hung out to dry, rusty steel bridges over streams that reflected the bright blue skies, apple pies left out on windowsills... a world of hard work with very little to show for it aside from the sunlight beaming down on a proud community. And Mandy wanted to trap it all in her Kodak film rolls and rescue it from the future. photography earth television future past love cook-stove glow laundry traditional nikon kodak kodachrome cell-phone farm pie massachusetts grim country digital missing nostalgic small-town film peace texting Rebecca McNutt
60812a9 And in all those escapes he could not help being astonished by the beauty of this land that was not his. He his in its breast, fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap water and tried not to love it. On nights when the sky was personal, weak with the weight of its own stars, he made himself not love it. Its graveyards and its low-lying rivers. Or just a house - solitary under a chinaberry tree; maybe a mule tethered and the light hitting its hide just so. Anything could stir him and he tried hard not to love it. earth slavery world love paul-d Toni Morrison
897f9fc Ah earth you old extinguisher. earth heat fire Samuel Beckett
f6afccf Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded. earth heaven new Paulo Coelho
7895879 Then they wondered if there were men in the stars. Why not? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought to be huge, those of Mars middle-sized, those of Venus very small. Unless it is the same everywhere. There are businessmen, police up there; people trade, fight, dethrone their kings. Some shooting stars suddenly slid past, describing a course in the sky like the parabola of a monstrous rocket. 'My Word,' said Bouvard, 'look at those worlds disappearing.' Pecuchet replied: 'If our world in its turn danced about, the citizens of the stars would be no more impressed than we are now. Ideas like that are rather humbling.' 'What is the point of it all?' 'Perhaps there isn't a point.' 'Yet...' and Pecuchet repeated the word two or three times, without finding anything more to say. earth science life outer-space Gustave Flaubert
2107024 We are touched by magic wands. For just a fraction of our day life is perfect, and we are absolutely happy and in harmony with the earth. The feeling passes much too quickly. But the memory - and the anticipation of other miracles - sustains us in the battle indefinitely. perfection earth magic nature sustenance miracles harmony John Nichols
c6fbe44 In her eyes was the reflection of everything that mattered: old diners with neon signs, vinyl records, celluloid film, drive-in movies, Pears soap, department stores, her brother's old blue Camaro car and the smell of coal dust in the rainy sky of a summer lightning storm. ...And all the nice bright colors of the past that she thought were gone for good came flowing back into her life like a wave of nostalgia flooding over her, reds, yellows, blues and greens drenching her gray memories in psychedelic ribbons and glittering fireworks. ...She hoped that the world would always hold those miniscule yet beautiful, deep and mysterious traces of memory. earth world rurl found-footage kodak bright colors mystery beautiful memory nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
8cd80a3 And then the earth, the world, the planet, the galaxy, and the entire solar system went crazy. earth world solar-system planet galaxy Robert Ludlum
bd200f0 It's all right if people think we are idiots. It's all right if we lie face down on the earth. It's all right if we open the coffin and climb in. earth idiots Robert Bly
3c980fa Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living amongst the shattered pieces. earth live nature way force method mold remake shatter style humankind break human-beings humans Robin Hobb
7ac5a76 A million years is a short time - the shortest worth messing with for most problems. You begin tuning your mind to a time scale that is the planet's time scale. For me, it is almost unconscious now and is a kind of companionship with the earth. earth science deep-time geoscience geology John McPhee
9c55337 Everything has a past, a voice, existed at some point, even things as small and seemingly meaningless as a house in a huge suburb. It's a house like every other house... but at some point a family lived there, made it theirs, made it important. When people forget that history, that somebody at some point thought the house mattered, it just becomes an empty pile of nailed wood and brick and concrete that gets torn down for some strip mall or chain store to take its place... and that's what happens more and more now, everything is disposable, always replaced with no thought at all. That's where things get lost, memories get lost, humanity slips through the cracks, because when we all fail to pay attention to the things that make up our lives, we're no longer human at all, not really. earth human family hope life material together Rebecca McNutt
893be34 "...I'm afraid of what the digital age will do to the world, to the things we think are important... it's almost like people want to believe in some illusion that they're robots and forget altogether that they're real, living people... but everything these days is disposable, even people themselves, and that's why I'm afraid for the world," Mandy confessed, looking depressed and worried. "So am I... but I'll still watch all of it as the world dooms itself, because I want to see how it ends, and whether or not they'll be intelligent enough to forget all of this digital illusion afterwards," Alecto explained. "I'm sure that they'll be able to realize how wrong it all is... even though the idiots outnumber most people these days, there are still enough intelligent people to fight against it." earth grief human next-generation cell-phone environmental nova-scotia robots digital apocalypse canada dystopian gone scary hopeless horror lost technology Rebecca McNutt
5900aae "I've seen a lot of stuff... maybe I've seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I've seen what they can do, how evil they can be... I've seen the Holocaust and I've seen Jonestown, I've seen the Vietnam War and I've seen Hiroshima... I've seen the Chernobyl disaster... I've seen the World Trade Center attack... I've been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive," Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding." earth grief nature human death chernobyl hazardous hippie alive smog nuclear jonestown personification kami disaster steel pollution holocaust vietnam-war lonely sad dying evil Rebecca McNutt
fab681e Lords of fire and earth and water, Lords of moon and wind and sky, Come now to the Old Man's daughter, Come from fathers long gone by. Bring blue from a distance eye. Lords of water, earth, and fire, Lords of wind and snow and rain, Give to my heart's desire. Life as all life comes with pain, But blue will come to us again. earth pain rain heart moon sky-life eye lords wind fire water desire snow Madeleine L'Engle
651a63b They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged. earth their-eyes-were-watching-god zora-neale-hurston crack renewal sun night Zora Neale Hurston
b8b4ced The wind and the grass and something in the sky, sun, or moon, shining on our backs as we run: They are gifts that humans toss away like socks on Christmas morning, because we see them every day and don't think of them as gifts anymore. But new socks are always better than old socks. And the wind and grass and sky, I think, are better seen with new eyes than jaded ones. I hope my eyes will never grow old. earth nature youth beauty gifts Kevin Hearne
ac1a4db I've heard that when you're in a life-or-death situation, like a car accident or a gunfight, all your senses shoot up to almost superhuman level, everything slows down, and you're hyper-aware of what's happening around you. As the shuttle careens toward the earth, the exact opposite is true for me. Everything silences, even the screams and shouts from the people on the other side of the metal door, the crashes that I pray aren't bodies, the hissing of rockets, Elder's cursing, my pounding heartbeat. I feel nothing--not the seat belt biting into my flesh, not my clenching jaw, nothing. My whole body is numb. Scent and taste disappear. The only thing about my body that works is my eyes,and they are filled with the image before them. The ground seems to leap up at us as we hurtle toward it. Through the blurry image of the world below us, I see the outline of land--a continent. And at once, my heart lurches with the desire to know this world, to make it our home. My eyes drink up the image of the planet--and my stomach sinks with the knowledge that this is a coastline I've never seen before. I could spin a globe of Earth around and still be able to recognize the way Spain and Portugal reach into the Atlantic, the curve of the Gulf of Mexico, the pointy end of India. But this continent--it dips and curves in ways I don't recognize, swirls into an unknown sea, creating peninsulas in shapes I do not know, scattering out islands in a pattern I cannot connect. And it's not until I see this that I realize: this world may one day become our home,but it will never be the home I left behind. earth travel discovery life godspeed elder amy-martin beth-revis shades-of-earth shuttle planet mission crash home journey Beth Revis
6c3ceae Death, the beginning of eternal things, is only the end of earthly cares. -Priest earth eternity Jules Verne
1adb6c9 People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience... but we'd be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives... because we didn't like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution? earth people human death hope life hippie litter plants smog environmentalism garbage environment canada pollution animals help scary water dangerous mental-illness evil Rebecca McNutt
a7260d3 If God wills that I die, then I die. No power on earth can change that. earth power Francine Rivers
8be50a8 I gaze out, to the stars. I remember the first time I saw real stars, through the hatch window. They were beautiful then, but now, seeing them here, all around me, beautiful feels like an inadequate word. I see the stars as a part of the universe, and having spent my life behind walls, suddenly having none fills me with both awe and terror. Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars. A million suns. Centuries away is Sol. Circling around it is Sol-Earth, the planet Amy came from. And one of these other stars is the Centauri binary system, where the new planet spins, waiting for us. And here we are, in the middle, surrounded by a sea of stars. Any of them could hold a planet. Any of them could hold a home. But all of them are out of reach. universe earth stars emotion across-the-universe choking elder out-of-reach sea-of-stars unreachable atu-series awe amy galaxy planets home terror Beth Revis
5ac577c "With Pollution, emotion is irrelevant, it is not their nature," Mearth sighed, making a face as if she were talking to an ignorant small child. "I didn't create them, humans created the Pollution. Cheryl Nobel, Alecto Steele, Albert Sanders, Olivia Campbell, all my pretty little Representations, there aren't many of them left these days but they're still very dangerous! They're here to tell society all about its mistakes! You don't understand the world of Representations." suicide earth grief loss nature fear death imagination chernobyl entity hazardous love-canal tar tar-sands toxic-waste sydney-tar-ponds cape-breton nova-scotia recycle hippie disturbing smog mother-earth imaginary chemicals representation coal green steel environment canada pollution storm dying scared Rebecca McNutt
a54479f I dream that someone in space says to me: So let us rush, then, to see the world. It is shaped like an egg, covered with seas and continents, warmed and lighted by the sun. It has churches of indescribable beauty, raised to gods that have never been seen; cities whose distant roofs and smokestacks will make your heart leap; ballparks and comfortable auditoriums in which people listen to music of the most serious import; to celebrate life is recorded. Here the joy of women's breasts and backsides, the colors of water, the shapes of trees, athletes, dreams, houses, the shapes of ecstasy and dismay, the shape even of an old shoe, are celebrated. Let us rush to see the world. They serve steak there on jet planes, and dance at sea. They have invented musical instruments to express love, peaceableness; to stir the finest memories and aspirations. They have invented games to catch the hearts of young men. They have ceremonies to exalt the love of men and women. They make their vows to music and the sound of bells. They have invented ways to heat their houses in the winter and cool them in the summer. They have even invented engines to cut their grass. They have free schools for the pursuit of knowledge, pools to swim in, zoos, vast manufactories of all kinds. They explore space and the trenches of the sea. Oh, let us rush to see this world. earth journals John Cheever
c6d85ed "The prints shop manager, a balding man of about thirty years old, dressed in a plaid work shirt and faded jeans, looked very shocked when he saw the headline text. "Sydney Tar Ponds, Is It As Dangerous As People Say? Well," he exclaimed, glancing at the front photo, which featured the Sydney Steel Corporation, along with its plumes of orange smog. "You know, most people your age are really against that mill, as if it's a disease. We have university students protesting every few weeks or so... strangely enough, the ones who have parents who rely on that steel mill to pay the bills." "What about the pollution?" Wendy questioned, almost accusingly, as if it was his fault. "What if dangerous chemicals are in the environment?" "Hey kid, I don't even work at the mill, never have, but my father, my uncle, their father, cousins, all worked there," the prints shop man argued, placing the newspapers in a cardboard box and taping it shut. "When it comes down to all that 'go green' crap, you have to ask yourself, is it worth risking a person's income, their job, their family... their life? I'm not saying you're wrong, but these newspapers might have a point." earth earth-day go-green industry-decline manager print recycle hippie smog newspaper environmentalism shop career green pollution job nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
26c750a I knew myself for the first time in a week, standing on earth instead of polished marble. earth identity nature-lover naomi-novik uprooted Naomi Novik
9b49d9c We rush through our days in such stress and intensity, as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world depended on us. We worry and grow anxious; we magnify trivia until they become important enough to control our lives. Yet all the time, we have forgotten that we are but temporary sojourners on the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly in the infinite night of the cosmos. earth nature impermanence mindfulness existentialism John O'Donohue
dd291af We have never understood how birds manage to fly, Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams, Now how heaven and earth can appear in a poem. earth heaven dreams genius Robert Bly
d21692f They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R'lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. earth worship cult great-old-ones r-lyeh sea hidden secrets H.P. Lovecraft
1863f33 "We keep sending colonies up into space," Akilah says, "and we don't even know what's at the bottom of the sea." "Yeah, we do," I counter. "Fish and stuff." Akilah laughs. "We've barely explored the sea. There are places where the water is so deep that it has never seen light." She sighs. "I would like to go to those places. I would like to sink down and down and down and see what's hidden at the bottom." The sea is a dangerous place because it makes you believe in forever. I stare back at the shoreline, where heavy boulders clutter the shore, a remembrance of the attacks during the Secessionary War. For all the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the war, more are dead and gone beneath the waves of the sea. I tread water, turning slowly, so the island's behind me and all I can see is the blue-green waters. The sea goes on forever and ever. We are tiny, almost invisible specks. It could swallow us up. We are less than the bright stars of the night sky, compared to the vastness of the sea. And it is this place, as one tiny, barely visible speck bobbing in the water, where Akilah feels safe. Maybe being alone in the sea, with its unexplored depths, its clawing-finger waves, really is safer compared to the land, where there are people and malice and death." earth death life below-the-sea ella-shepard ground waves sea dangerous Beth Revis
18555b7 Our ancestors said to their mother Earth: 'We are yours'. Modern Humanity said to Nature, 'You are mine'. The Green Man has returned as the living face of the whole earth so that through his mouth we may say to the universe: 'We are one'. universe earth nature humanity green-man mother-earth cosmos Sharon Brubaker
51d7553 Eating is a genuine need, continuous from our first day to our last, amounting over time to our most significant statement of what we are made of and what we have chosen to make of our connection to home ground. earth sustainable ethics eating food Barbara Kingsolver
3483372 She then thought the land enchanted into everlasting brightness and happiness; she fancied, then, that into a region so lovely no bale or woe could enter, but would be charmed away and disappear before the sight of the glorious guardian mountains. Now she knew the truth, that earth has no barrier which avails against agony. earth pain nature sorrow mountains Elizabeth Gaskell
66db9de An oceanic expanse of pre-dawn gray white below obscures a checkered grid of Saskatchewan, a snow plain nicked by the dark, unruly lines of woody swales. One might imagine that little is to be seen from a plane at night, but above the clouds the Milky Way is a dense, blazing arch. A full moon often lights the planet freshly, and patterns of human culture, artificially lit, are striking in ways not visible in daylight. One evening I saw the distinctive glows of cities around Delhi diffused like spiral galaxies in a continuous deck of stratus clouds far below us. In Algeria and on the Asian steppes, wind-whipped pennants of gas flared. The jungle burned in incandescent spots in Malaysia and Brazil. One clear evening at 20,000 feet over Manhattan, I could see, it seemed, every streetlight halfway to the end of Long Island. A summer lightning bolt unexpectedly revealed thousands of bright dots on the ink-black veld of the northern Transvaal: sheep. earth humanity flight Barry Lopez
2f8df6f It takes a while to spoil a world, but it can be done. earth Ursula K. Le Guin
d24600f Day had now given away to night and as we wandered along the great avenue lighted by the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking down upon us out of her luminous green eye, it seemed that we were alone in the universe, and I, at least, was content that it should be so. universe earth dejah-thoris john-carter night Edgar Rice Burroughs
049bfc4 Worse still, it isn't actually necessary to look to space for petrifying danger. As we are about to see, Earth can provide plenty of danger of its own. earth space Bill Bryson
899eef4 "Tell yourselves whatever you'd like, but I'm afraid it doesn't make it true," Mearth sighed, beginning to look impatient. "Step aside Mandy, I have to remediate him, otherwise you'll find yourself in a whole mess of trouble." "You can't do this, it's wrong," Mandy insisted. "You don't have a choice, Mandy! Either you let his life compromise the lives of everybody else in the world, or you let me remediate him and get it over with," Mearth icily declared. "...Do what she says, Mandy Valems...." Alecto added, standing up and staring with glazed eyes at Mearth. "I can't," said Mandy. "...Go away!" Alecto shouted at her suddenly, glaring with narrowed eyes, speaking in a voice that hardly sounded like his own. "Get out of here, Mandy Valems! I hate you, I want you to leave me alone! Go home and don't ever come back here!" "I...." Mandy started, looking totally shocked. "I said I hate you, don't you understand anything? Go away, get out of here!" Alecto repeated menacingly, stepping forward in a threatening manner. He looked like a mad dog, shivering as he chased her away from his site. She tearfully took off running, seeming both shocked and horrified, and he watched her leave for a moment with a blank expression, his dark eyes hollow. He looked like he was going to black out, but Mearth walked quickly towards him, for once not smiling at all. If it weren't for her eyes, she would've looked like a person. "That was very cruel of you to do, Sydney Tar Ponds. I thought you loved her," she disappointedly exclaimed. "I do love her, she's my friend, and that's why I said that stuff to her," Alecto replied forlornly. "None of it's true, I don't hate her at all... but I know what's going to happen and I don't want her to see it, so I lied to her and told her I hated her... can you explain to her after... why I said all that to her?" illness earth grief loss depression faith death friendship hope life love nova-scotia environment rescue pollution help dog dying Rebecca McNutt
6bcb85e "The missing link between animals and the real human being is most likely ourselves". Konrad Lorenz "Nothing exists except atoms and space; everything else is opinion". Democritus of Abdera "The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity". Edward de Bono." earth humanity extra-terrestrials great-flood trans-generational-memory-gene noah-s-ark pyramid homo-sapiens darwinism John Cowie
ca4d30a The earth is a dynamic place [...] with multiple different processes of deposition and erosion under way at all times. You can make guesses based on style and weathering, but fragments of worked stone that have been in the open for an unknown period can't be dated by their archaeological context, because there is none. Carbon-dating organic materials in the sediment in which they were found won't work, either, because they were never entombed and preserved in sediment. And in fact no other objective and widely accepted method of dating can tell us how old they are. For these reasons archaeologists have to discount artifacts found on the surface when coming to any conclusions about the age of a site, even though the artifacts themselves may obviously be ancient. earth deposition dynamic erosion preservation geology dating Graham Hancock
5677f8a What we have, we all must lose--that applied to everything, even to that which we thought we had the greatest right. We were tenants of this earth--nothing more. earth possessions Alexander McCall Smith
6515ac9 Meanwhile, the great ash would rest where she lay, and mosses would creep over her trunk, and tiny creatures make their homes her dim hollows. Even in death she was a link in the great chain of the forest's being. earth life fantasy-fiction Juliet Marillier
de117c2 "The President called it the "Epitome of the American dream." Daddy called it the "unholy alliance of business and government." But all it really was, was America giving up. Bailing out in order to join the Financial Resource Exchange. A multinational alliance focused on one thing: profit. Fund global medical care to monopolize vaccines. Back unified currency to collect planet-wide interest. And provide the resources needed for a select group of scientists and military personnel to embark on the first trip across the universe in a quest to find more natural resources--more profit. The answer to my parents' dreams. And my worst nightmare. And I know something about nightmares, seeing as how I've been sleeping longer than I've been alive. I hope. What if this is just a part of a long dream dreamt in the short time between when Ed locked the cryo door and Hassan pushed the button to freeze me? What if? It's a strange sort of sleep, this. Never really waking up, but becoming aware of consciousness inside a too-still body. The dreams weave in and out of memories. The only thing keeping the nightmares from engulfing me is the hope that there couldn't possibly be a hundred more years before I wake up. Not a hundred years. Not three hundred. Not three hundred and one. Please, God, no. Sometimes it feels like a thousand years have passed; sometimes it feels as if I've only been sleeping a few moments. I feel most like I'm in that weird state of half-asleep, half-awake I get when I've tried to sleep past noon, when I know I should get up, but my mind starts wandering and I'm sure I can never get back to sleep. Even if I do slip back into a dream for a few moments, I'm mostly just awake with my eyes shut. Yeah. Cryo sleep is like that. Sometimes I think there's something wrong. I shouldn't be so aware. But then I realize I'm only aware for a moment, and then, as I'm realizing it, I slip into another dream. Mostly, I dream of Earth. I think that's because I didn't want to leave it. A field of flowers; smells of dirt and rain. A breeze ... But not really a breeze, a memory of a breeze, a memory made into a dream that tries to drown out my frozen mind. Earth. I hold on to my thoughts of Earth. I don't like the dreamtime. The dreamtime is too much like dying. They are dreams, but I'm too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I've already lost too much to let them take over. I push the dream-memory down. That happened centuries ago, and it's too late for regrets now. Because all my parents ever wanted was to be a part of the first manned interstellar exploratory mission, and all I ever wanted was to be with them. And I guess it doesn't matter that I had a life on Earth, and that I loved Earth, and that by now, my friends have all lived and gotten old and died, and I've just been lying here in frozen sleep." time earth reality dreams amy-martin beth-revis centuries atu-series Beth Revis
038c6f0 The earth is round and flat at the same time. This is obvious. That it is round appears indisputable; that it is flat is our common experience, also indisputable. The globe does not supersede the map; the map does not distort the globe. understanding earth dichotomies map globe Jeanette Winterson
a0eaee1 "I never thought before," said Tirin unruffled, "of the fact that there are people sitting on a hill, up there, on Urras, looking at Anarres, at us, and saying, 'Look, there's the Moon.' Our earth is their Moon; our Moon is their earth." "Where, then, is Truth?" declaimed Bedap, and yawned. "In the hill one happens to be sitting on," said Tirin." earth moon truth anarres hill urras Ursula K. Le Guin