There are souls which fall from heaven like flowers; but ere the pure and fresh buds can open, they are trodden in the dust of the earth, and lie soiled and crushed under the foul tread of some brutal hoof.
Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.
I fully take in the real death (of my child), I know I shall follow and die the same real death, and through that same real death I trust the spirit of Christ will be my guide and helper, and bring me to a better life, and unite me again with those whom I have loved, and whom I love still, and those who have loved me and love me still. God is no giver of imperfect gifts, and He has given me life, but life on earth is imperfect. He has given me love, but love on earth is imperfect. I believe, I must believe in perfection, and therefore I believe in a life perfected and in a love perfected. 'Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders--Gott helfe mich Amen.'
At Jesus' feet--that is our place of privilege and of blessing, and here it is that we are to be educated and fitted for the practical duties of life. Here we are to renew our strength while we wait on Him, and to learn how to mount on wings as eagles; and here we are to become possessed of that true knowledge which is power. Here we are to learn how real work is to be done, and to be armed with the true motive power to do it. Here we are to find solace amidst both the trials of work--and they are not few--and the trials of life in general; and here we are to anticipate something of the blessedness of heaven amidst the days of earth; for to sit at His feet is indeed to be in heavenly places, and to gaze upon His glory is to do what we shall never tire of doing yonder.--_W. Hay Aitken._
What comes now? The earth awaits What fierce wonder from the skies? Thunder, trampling through the night? Morning, with illustrious eyes? Morning, from the springs of light: Thunder, round Heaven's opening gates.
Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, Uproar the universal peace, confound All unity on earth.
I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it), to make it bear well: and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad. I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surfaces of the earth.--_Swift._
The common growth of Mother Earth Suffices me,--her tears, her mirth, Her humblest mirth and tears.
I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.
The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.--_Marcus Antoninus._
The only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, in the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well.
God is the great composer; men are only the performers. Those grand pieces which are played on earth were composed in heaven.
Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.
It will tend to the centre of the earth.
The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice.
Wert thou all that I wish thee, great, glorious, and free, First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea.
When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!
Religion is an everlasting lodestar, that beams the brighter in the heavens the darker here on earth grows the night.
All that can be ascertained concerning the structure succession of conditions, actions, and position m space of the earth, is the matter of fact of its natural history. But? as in biology, there remains the matter of reasoning from these facts to their causes, which is just as much science as the other, and indeed more; and this constitutes geological aetiology.
Great warmth at first is the certain ruin of every great achievement. Doth not water, although ever so cool, moisten the earth?
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
Little deeds of kindness, little words of love, Help to make earth happy like the heaven above.
Sit tibi terra levis=--May earth lie light upon thee.
Sei gefuhllos! / Ein leichtbewegtes Herz / Ist ein elend Gut / Auf der wankenden Erde=--Do not give way to feeling (_lit._ be unfeeling). A quickly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
The rich left their wealth, children left the luxurious homes of their parents to go into the austerity of the desert, etc., according to Philo the Jew. All this was foretold long ages ago. For two thousand years no Gentile had worshipped the God of the Jews, and at the time foretold, the crowd of Gentiles worshipped this only God. The temples were destroyed, the very kings bowed themselves under the cross. All this was of the Spirit of God spread abroad upon the earth.
I mean, if the relationship can't survive the long term, why on earth would it be worth my time and energy for the short term?
"It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever, according as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it fell from the mountain, and brake in pieces the iron, the clay, the silver and the gold. This is what God has revealed to thee of the things which must come in the fulness of time. This dream is true and the interpretation thereof is faithful. Then Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face towards the earth, etc."
A great man living for high ends is the divinest thing that can be seen on earth.
Many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all.
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
Filius terr?=--A son of the earth; one low-born.
Effodiuntur opes, irritamenta malorum=--Riches, the incentives to evil, are dug out of the earth.
There is a conspicuous void in the arguments and the programs of the counter-culture groups of this country, in that they have produced no well-formulated economic theories…. Unfortunately and ironically, Lou Kelso, who has some very imaginative economic proposals, has been offering them for many years to the establishment, the dinosaur culture….”Two-Factor” economics or “universal capitalism” recognizes the emerging importance of technology, and accepts the diminishing necessity of human labor; it is an economic theory that is beautifully tailored to the values and beliefs of most Catalog readers and those seeking alternatives to dinosaur existence…. These proposals have been laid on presidential candidates, congressmen, newspaper publishers, leading economists, and nearly all key decision makers of the establishment over and over again…. My advice to Lou is: “Come on, Lou, grow long hair, drop all that establishment costumery, immerse yourself in the now generation, and start to work with a constituency that wants you and needs you. [ The Whole Earth Catalog , Spring 1970.]
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.
Nur in Traumen wohnt das Gluck der Erde=--Only in dreams does the happiness of the earth dwell.
Was there nought better than to enjoy? No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due? No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?
I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children; whose work serves the earth he lives on and from and with, and is therefore pleasurable and meaningful and unending; whose rewards are not deferred until "retirement," but arrive daily and seasonally out of the details of the life of their place; whose goal is the continuance of the life of the world, which for a while animates and contains them, and which they know they can never compass with their understanding or desire.
Ye are the salt of the earth.
It so happens that calcareous skeletons, exactly similar to the _Globigerinæ_ of the chalk, are being formed, at the present moment, by minute living creatures, which flourish in multitudes, literally more numerous than the sands of the sea-shore, over a large extent of that part of the earth's surface which is covered by the ocean.
If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or another, in some place or another, the volcano will break out and flame to heaven.--_Daniel Webster._
Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone. For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air. The echoes bound to a joyful sound, But shrink from voicing care. Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go. They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all. There are none to decline your nectared wine, But alone you must drink life's gall. Feast, and your halls are crowded. Fast, and the world goes by. Succeed and give, and it helps you live, But no man can help you die. There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Even if we resign ourselves to the thought that the likenesses and likelihoods which we project upon the unseen and unknown, nay, that the hope of our meeting again as we once met on earth, need not be fulfilled exactly as we shape them to ourselves, where is the argument to make us believe that the real fulfilment can be less perfect than what even a weak human heart devises and desires? This trust that whatever is will be best, is what is meant by faith, true, because inevitable, faith. We see traces of it in many places and many religions, but I doubt whether anywhere that faith is more simply and more powerfully expressed than in the Old and New Testaments: 'For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him' (Isaiah lxiv. 4). 'As it is written, Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him' (1 Cor. ii. 9).
Jesus Christ had no where to rest on earth but in the sepulchre.
Most men judge only by their senses and let themselves be persuaded by what they see... On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages. \x85 Do people really think that because the sun gives us light every day and year, it was made only to keep us from bumping into walls? No, no, this visible god gives light to man by accident, as a king's torch accidentally shines upon a working man or burglar passing in the street.
Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.
We must not forget that if earthly love has in the vulgar mind been often degraded into mere animal passion, it still remains in its purest sense the highest mystery of our existence, the most perfect blessing and delight on earth, and at the same time the truest pledge of our more than human nature. To be able to feel the same unselfish devotion to the Deity which the human heart is capable of, if filled with love for another human soul, is something that may well be called the best religion.
"The earth loveth the shower," and "the holy ether knoweth what love is." The Universe, too, loves to create whatsoever is destined to be made.
We are ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times.
This is where our intuitive knowledge leads us. If it be not true, there is no truth in man; and if it be, he finds therein a great reason for humiliation, because he must abase himself in one way or another. And since he cannot exist without such knowledge, I wish that before entering on deeper researches into nature he would consider her seriously and at leisure, that he would examine himself also, and knowing what proportion there is.... Let man then contemplate the whole realm of nature in its full and exalted majesty, and turn his eyes from the low objects which hem him round; let him observe that brilliant light set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe, let the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle described by that sun, and let him see with amazement that even this vast circle is itself but a fine point in regard to that described by the stars revolving in the firmament. If our view be arrested there, let imagination pass beyond, and it will sooner exhaust the power of thinking than nature that of giving scope for thought. The whole visible world is but an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet bring forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is every where, the circumference no where. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, in that thought let imagination lose itself.
Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.
In even the wisest soul lies a whole world of internal madness, an authentic demon-empire; out of which, indeed, his world of wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundation does a habitable flowery earth-rind.
The sublimest canticle to be heard on earth is the stammering of the human soul on the lips of infancy.
If a man with the material of enjoyment around him and virtually within his reach walks God's earth wilfully and obstinately with a gloomy spirit, ... making misery his worship, we feel assured he is contravening his Maker's design in endowing him with life.
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.
Humility, modesty, sobriety, purity, piety, and prudence, with meekness, ornament the soul, and make us live on earth a truly angelic life.--BL. JORDAN OF SAXONY.
The question is whether there is, or whether there is not, hidden in every one of the sacred books, something that could lift up the human heart from this earth to a higher world, something that could make man feel the omnipresence of a higher Power, something that could make him shrink from evil and incline to good, something to sustain him in the short journey through life, with its bright moments of happiness, and its long hours of terrible distress.
On this hapless earth There's small sincerity of mirth, And laughter oft is but an art To drown the outcry of the heart.
Despise no enemy, however insignificant he may be--see how the shadow of the earth causes an eclipse of the moon, or how a midge brings a tear to the eye of a lion.
If this is done, excellent benefits will follow, foremost among which will surely be a more equitable division of goods. For the violence of public disorder has divided cities into two classes of citizens, with an immense gulf lying between them. On the one side is a faction exceedingly powerful because exceedingly rich. Since it alone has under its control every kind of work and business, it diverts to its own advantage and interest all production sources of wealth and exerts no little power in the administration itself of the State. On the other side are the needy and helpless masses, with minds inflamed and always ready for disorder. But if the productive activity of the multitude can be stimulated by the hope of acquiring some property in land, it will gradually come to pass that, with the difference between extreme wealth and extreme penury removed, one class will become neighbor to the other. Moreover, there will surely be a greater abundance of the things which the earth produces. For when men know they are working on what belongs to them, they work with far greater eagerness and diligence. Nay, in a word, they learn to love the land cultivated by their own hands, whence they look not only for food but for some measure of abundance for themselves and their dependents. All can see how much this willing eagerness contributes to an abundance of produce and the wealth of a nation. [ Rerum Novarum, Op. cit. , §66, 1891.]
A heaven on earth.
The ancients called man the world in miniature, and certainly the name is a happy one, because man being composed of earth, water, air and fire, the body of the earth resembles the body of man. As man has in him bones for the support and framework of his flesh, likewise in the world the rocks are the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in their breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean which rises and falls every six hours as if the world breathed; as from the aforesaid pool of blood veins issue which {164} ramify throughout the human body, so does the ocean fill the body of the earth with innumerable veins of water. The body of the earth lacks sinews, which do not exist because sinews are made for movement, and the world being in perpetual stability no movement occurs, and there being no movement, sinews are not necessary; but in all other points they resemble each other greatly.
That very law which moulds a tear, / And bids it trickle from its source; / That law preserves the earth a sphere, / And guides the planets in their course.
The subterranean courses of water, like those which are made between the air and the earth, are those which continually consume and deepen the beds of their currents. The earth which is carried by rivers is discharged at the end of their course, that is to say, the earth carried from the highest part of the river's course is discharged at the lowest depth of its course. Where fresh water arises in the sea, the miracle of the creation of an island is manifest, which will be discovered sooner or later in proportion as the quantity of water is greater or less. And an island of this kind is formed by the deposit of earth and stones made by the subterranean current of water in the channels through which it passes.
Men at most differ as heaven and earth; but women, worst and best, as heaven and hell.--_Tennyson._
I am one of you and being one of you Is being and knowing what I am and know. Yet I am the necessary angel of earth, Since, in my sight, you see the earth again, Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set And, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone Rise liquidly in liquid lingerings, Like watery words awash; like meanings said By repetitions of half-meanings.
Where is the capacity for heaven to come from if it be not developed on earth? Where, indeed, is even the smallest appreciation of God and heaven to come from when so little of spirituality has ever been known or manifested here? Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 116.
Rest thy unrest in England's lawful earth.
Shakespeare was forbidden of heaven to have any plans.... Not for him the founding of institutions, the preaching of doctrines, or the repression of abuses. Neither he, nor the sun, did on any morning that they rose together, receive charge from their Maker concerning such things. They were both of them to shine on the evil and good; both to behold unoffendingly all that was upon the earth, to burn unappalled upon the spears of kings, and undisdaining upon the reeds of the river.
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; Be not discouraged — keep on — there are divine things, well envelop'd; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. … To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / The earth and every common sight, / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light, / The glory and the freshness of a dream. / It is not now as it has been of yore; / Turn wheresoe'er I may, / By night or day, / The things which I have seen, I now can see no more.
Whom Heaven has made a slave, no parliament of men, nor power that exists on earth, can render free.
Perfect light / Would dazzle, not illuminate, the sight; / From earth it is enough to glimpse at heaven.
What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophecy or as poesy. … should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.
It is the key of obedience that opens the door of paradise. Jesus Christ has confided that key to His vicar, the Pope, Christ on earth, whom all are obliged to obey even unto death.--ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA.