This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"As the bosom of earth blooms again and again, having buried out of sight the dead leaves of autumn, and loosed the frosty bands of winter; so does the heart, in spite of all that melancholy poets write, feel many renewed springs and summers. It is a beautiful and a blessed world we live in, and whilst that life lasts, to lose the enjoyment of it is a sin." - Talbot Wilson Chambers
"Ideas are the mightiest influence on earth. One great thought breathed in to a man may regenerate him." - William Ellery Channing
"My mind to me a kingdom is; such present joys therein I find, that it excels all other bliss that earth affords." - Geoffrey Chaucer
"The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground." - G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
"Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves illustrious, in the heavens immortal." - Chilon of Lacedemon NULL
"Nature is exhaustessly reproductive... Mother Earth cares for her children. The landscape of the farm is full of divine feeling and rich in suggestion that inspire calm and quicken industry. It throbs with the tender heart of God. It is alive. In its simple and steady processes it reveals the Father’s care for His children." -
"There is nothing on earth you cannot have - once you have mentally accepted the fact that you can have it." - Robert Collier
"A man who has had his way is seldom happy, for generally he finds that the way does not lead very far on this earth of desires which can never be fully satisfied." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
"Why fear tomorrow, timid heart? Why tread the future's way? We only need to do our part Today, dear child, today. The past is written! Close the book On pages sad and gay; Within the future do not look, But live today-today. "Tis this one hour that God has given; His now we must obey; And it will make our earth his heaven To live today-today." - Lydia Avery Coonley Ward
"The very nearest approach to domestic happiness on earth is in the cultivation on both sides of absolute unselfishness. Never both be angry at once. Never talk at one another, either alone or in company. Never speak loud to one another unless the house is on fire. Let each; one strive to yield oftenest to the wishes of the other. Let self-denial be the daily aim and practice of each. Never find fault unless it is perfectly certain that a fault has been committed, and always speak lovingly. Never taunt with a past mistake. Neglect the whole world besides rather than one another. Never allow a request to be repeated. Never make a remark at the expense of each other, it is a meanness. Never part for a day without loving words to think of during absence. Never meet without a loving welcome. Never let the sun go down upon any anger or grievance. Never let any fault you have committed go by until you have frankly confessed it and asked forgiveness. Never forget the happy hours of early love. Never sigh over what might have been, but make the best of what is. Never forget that marriage is ordained of God, and that His blessing alone can make it what it should ever be. Never be contented till you know you are both walking in the narrow way. Never let your hopes stop short of the eternal home." -
"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms, Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
"There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than a thousand years, there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
"Religion cannot be kept within the bounds of sermons and scriptures. It is a force in itself and it calls for the integration of lands and peoples in harmonious unity. The lands (of earth) wait for those who can discern their rhythms. The peculiar genius of each continent, the placid lakes, all call for relief from the constant burdens of exploitation." -
"There is no object on earth which cannot be looked at from a cosmic point of view." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"There are three reasons why, quite apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first reason is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second reason is to escape material impoverishment; the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forgo forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third reason is our spiritual need for an open frontier. The ultimate purpose of space travel is to bring to humanity, not only scientific discoveries and an occasional spectacular show on television, but a real expansion of our spirit." - Freeman John Dyson
"Do not pride yourself on the few great men who, over the centuries, have been born on your earth through no merit of yours. Reflect, rather, on how you have treated them at the time, and how you have followed their teachings." - Albert Einstein
"O Youth: Do you know that yours is not the first generation to yearn for a life of beauty and freedom? Do you know that all your ancestors felt as you do - and fell victim to trouble and hatred? Do you know, also, that your fervent wishes can only find fulfillment if you succeed in attaining love and understanding of men, and animals, and plants, and stars, so that every joy becomes your joy and every pain your pain? Open your eyes, your heart, your hands, and avoid the poison your forebears so greedily sucked in from History. Then will all the earth be your fatherland, and all your work and effort spread forth blessings." - Albert Einstein
"We have in America the largest public school system on earth, the most expensive college buildings, the most extensive curriculum, but nowhere else is education so blind to its objectives, so indifferent to any specific outcome as in America. One trouble has been at the repression of faults rather than creation of virtues." - William P. Faunce
"Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership." - E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster
"Science had radically changed the conditions of human life on earth. It has expanded our knowledge and our power but not capacity to use them with wisdom." - James William Fulbright
"Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"It is by faith that poetry, as well as devotion, soars above this dull earth; that imagination breaks through its clouds, breathes a purer air, and lives in a softer light." - Henry Giles
"Water, gentlemen, is the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing. It sucks out its innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips." - Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux
"Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed on it, we sleep at night in its arms with greater security for the safety of our lives, peace, and prosperity than bolts and bars can give." - Thomas Guthrie
"The greatest things ever done on earth have been done little by little." - Thomas Guthrie
"All the sounds of the earth are like music." - Oscar Hammerstein II, fully Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hamerstein II
"Poverty breeds wealth; and wealth in its turn breeds poverty. The earth, to form the mould, is taken out of the ditch; and whatever may be the height of the one will be the depth of the other." - Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
"Science is teaching man to know and reverence truth, and to believe that only as far as he knows and loves it can he live worthily on earth, and vindicate the dignity of his spirit." - Moses Harvey
"The Kaddish is not a prayer for the dead, but a mandate for the living... It bids man rise above his sorrow... and fixes his view upon the welfare of mankind. It lifts his hope and vision to a day... when mankind shall at last inhabit the earth as children of the one God and Father, and justice reign supreme in peace." - R. Hertz, fully Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz
"The expansion of human power has hardly begun, and what we are going to do with our power may either save or destroy the planet. The earth may be of small significance within the infinite universe. But if it is of some significance, we hold the key to it. In our own age we have been force into the realization that there will be either one world, or no world." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"A great man is a gift, in some measure of a revelation of God. A great man, living for high ends, is the divinest thing that can be seen on earth. The value and interest of history are derived chiefly from the lives and services of the eminent men whom it commemorates." - George Stillman Hillard
"Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven." - Roswell Dwight Hitchcock
"The expansion of human power has hardly begun, and what we are going to do with our power may either save or destroy the planet. The earth may be of small significance within the infinite universe. But if it is of some significance, we hold the key to it. In our own age we have been force into the realization that there will be either one world, or no world." - Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL
"Whatever therefore is consequent to a tie of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such a condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." - Thomas Hobbes
"The body oppressed by excess bears down the mind, and depresses to the earth any portion of the divine spirit we had been endowed with." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories." - Thomas Jefferson
"The earth belongs to the living and not to the dead." - Thomas Jefferson
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson
"As man increases his knowledge of the heavens, why should he fear the unknown on earth? As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?" - Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
"What right has any free, reasonable soul on earth to sell himself for a shilling a day to murder any man, right or wrong?" - Charles Kingsley
"God gives all men, all earth to love." - Rudyard Kipling