Great Throughts Treasury

"If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;... If you can fill the unforgiving minute With Sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!" - Rudyard Kipling

"In aging, the (one's) inner clock slows down while earth time remains constant. Your planet continues to move in three directions at the same time, giving to you your speed or flow of time, past, present and future. There is less time to do things as one grows older and time is speeded up because the living body processes are slowing down. Time is a wave-motion in a triple unity with light and gravity." - Elizabeth Klarer

"Equality is the share of every one at their advent upon earth, and equality is also their when placed beneath it." -

"When the Copernican Revolution superseded the ancient Polemic world view, the earth took its rightful place as one planet among many. Man was no longer the center of the universe and though his self-image was deflated, he grew in maturity. In the same way, we must take our rightful place in nature - not as its self-centered and profligate "master" with the divine right of kings to exploit and despoil, but as one species living in harmony with the whole." - R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

"I say to you truly, the heart of him who loves is a paradise on earth; he has God in himself, for God is love." - Abbé Hugo Felicite de Lamennais

"Music is God’s best gift to man, the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth that we take to heaven. But music, like all our gifts, is given us in the germ. It is for us to unfold and develop it by instruction and cultivation." - Charles W. Landon

"The tree that needs two arms to span its girth began from the tiniest shoot. Yon tower, nine storeys high, rose from a little mound of earth. A journey of a thousand miles began with a single step." -

"The more we search for an alibi, the more we discover that unhappiness on earth is man-made." - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence

"We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table." - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence

"Many afflictions will not cloud and obstruct peace of mind so much as one sin: therefore, if you would walk cheerfully, be most careful to walk holily. All the winds about the earth make not an earthquake, but only that within." - Robert Leighton

"No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?" - Cecil Day-Lewis, or Day Lewis

"As far as the stars are from the earth, and as different as fire is from water, so much do self-interest and integrity differ." - Lucan, full name Marcus Annaeus Lucanus NULL

"It is to labor, and to labor only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable value. Labor is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage; that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities, and the ocean with ships that has give us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism." - William M’Culloch

"There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity." - Douglas MacArthur

"The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future." - Marya Mannes

"To those who are His all things are not only easy to be borne, but even to be gladly chosen. Their will is united to that which moves heaven and earth, which gives laws to angels, and rule the courses of the world." - Henry Edward Manning

"On a mural Francis Scott Bradford has depicted the life of man. A heroic figure of man is painted as chained to the skyscrapers of his cities, rearing up, stretching his chains, peering onward into the stars and planets of the heavens. And the scroll inscribes the summary: "Man, though chained to earth, looks across time and space toward an unknown perfection which he may never reach but will forever seek."" -

"To be mistaken is a misfortune to be pitied; but to know the truth and not to conform one's actions to it is a crime which Heaven and Earth condemn." - Guiseppe Mazzini

"There are no passengers on Spaceship Planet Earth. Everybody is crew." - Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan

"When does God create heaven and earth? In the beginning. And when is the beginning? At every moment. Dying to past and future, we are born into the creative Now. Beginner's mind is the mind of God." - Stephen Mitchell

"Often our work seems insignificant and unimportant when we compare ourselves with the immensity of time and the universe, but God gave us our moment on earth to be used in the best possible way." - J. V. Moldenhawer

"The greatest security of the liberties of a people who do not cultivate the earth is their not knowing the use of money... The people who have no money have but few wants; and these are supplied with ease, and in an equal manner. Equality is then unavoidable; and hence it proceeds that their chiefs are not despotic." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"The meaning of life is to be found in our surroundings and in our relationships... Life is meaningful when we respect the best of tradition while still loving innovation... Life is fulfilling when we marry pride with tolerance, when our deeds and our words are nourished by hope and by realism, when the wisdom of the ages catches the passionate eye of youth. Life on this earth in our time is, above all, a parade of interdependent peoples, interdependent ideas, interdependent solutions. We are all artists of the possible - and dreamers of that which is just now beyond our reach, but may not be tomorrow." - Youssou N’Dour

"Heaven is our heritage, Earth but a player's stage." - Thomas Nashe

"Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sidereal... Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him... For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth." -

"Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love; there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most Love. What we Love, we'll Hear; what we Love, we'll Trust; and what we Love, we'll serve, ay, and suffer for too. If you love me (says our Blessed Redeemer) keep my Commandments. Why? Why then he'll Love us; then we shall be his Friends; then he'll send us the Comforter; then whatsover we ask, we shall receive; and then where he is we shall be also, and that forever. Behold the Fruits of Love; the Power, Vertue, Benefit and Beauty of Love! Love is above all; and when it prevails in us all, we shall all be Lovely, and in Love with God and one with another. " - William Penn

"I learned that no man in God’s wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man." - Johann Pestalozzi, fully Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

"It is this earth that, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born; it is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is never found an enemy of man." - Pliny the Younger, full name Casus Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo NULL

"Man was born to be tested on this earth... If I am to live twenty more years, I will try to live enjoying each moment, instead of killing myself to get more... to be a man means to be responsible, to know when it is time to speak, to know what has to be said, to know when one must stay silent." - Reyad NULL

"The miracles of earth are the laws of heaven." -

"Earth has not a spectacle more glorious or more fair to show than this - love tolerating intolerance; charity covering, as with a avail, even the sin of the lack of charity." -

"The Divine Wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it." -

"The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one! " - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"The money of the miser is coming out of the earth when he is himself going into it." - Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

"The sea does not contain all the pearls, the earth does not enclose all the treasures, and the flint-stone does not enclose all the diamonds, since the head of man encloses wisdom." - Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

"Do not envy the violet the dew-drop or glitter of a sunbeam; do not envy the bee the plant from which he draws some sweets. Do not envy man the little goods he possesses; for the earth is for him the plant from which he obtains some sweets, and his mind is the dew-drop which the world colors for an instant." - Leopold Schefer

"If you wish to be like the gods on earth, to be free in the realms of the dead, pluck not the fruit from the garden! In appearance it may glisten to the eye; but the perishable pleasure of possession quickly avenges the curse of curiosity." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

"Without our faith in free will the earth would be the scene not only of the most horrible nonsense but also of the most intolerable boredom." - Arthur Schnitzler

"[The earth] is so small and so fragile and such a precious little spot in that universe that you can block it out with your thumb, and you realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you - all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love." - Russell Schweikart, fully Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart aka Schweikart

"This we know. The earth does not belong to man: man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." -

"We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten." -

"What is man without beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth." -

"The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart." -

"The happiest miser on earth is the man who saves up every friend he can make." - Robert E. Sherwood, fully Robert Emmet Sherwood

"Proposed four consumption criteria for simple living. (1) Does what I own or buy promote activity, self-reliance, and involvement, or does it induce passivity and dependence? (2) Are my consumption patterns basically satisfying, or do I buy much that serves no real need? (3) How tied is my present job and lifestyle to installment payments, maintenance and repair costs, and the expectations of others? (4) Do I consider the impact of my consumption patterns on other people and on the Earth?" - Duane Elgin and Arnold Mitchell (1918-1985)

"We believe in a life continuum, and eternal life. Each incarnation or lifetime on earth is 'just a day in the classroom'... We believe the plane of greatest learning is the physical plane. It is up to all of us to make the most of each carnation. We believe that all there is in the universe is energy... and all energy forms, from subatomic particles to stars, are in a constant state of change and transformation... that interpreting energy frequencies on sensory bands creates the reality in which each life-form lives." - Richard and Greta Smolowe

"Meanwhile no such thing as internal affairs remains on our crowded Earth. Mankind's salvation lies exclusively in everyone's making everything his business." -

"Divine wisdom, intending to detain us some time on earth, has done well to cover with a veil the prospect of the life to come; for if our sight could clearly distinguish the opposite bank, who would remain on this tempestuous coast of time?" -

"Stand close to a mountain and you will see only a massive wall of earth and stone. Stand at a distance and you will see heights. Often we find fault with what we see, when the fault really lies in where we stand." -

"We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do." - Stockholm Conference NULL