This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Earth is but the frozen echo of the silent voice of God." - Samuel Miller Hageman
"If the instinctual and repressed kindness of mankind were suddenly let loose upon the earth, sooner than we think would we be members one of another, sitting around one family hearth-stone, and singing the song of the new humanity." - George D. Herron
"Dazzled by the brilliant achievements of the intellect in science and technique, we have been deluded into believing that we are the masters of the earth and our will the ultimate criterion of what is right and wrong." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"When the light of the star which flows into my eyes as a drop of gold first pierced the darkness in space, there was not a single eye on earth looking at the sky." - Nâzım Hikmet
"With nature’s help, humankind can set into creation all that is necessary and life sustaining. Everything in nature, the sum total of heaven and earth, becomes a temple and an altar for the service of God." - Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and Sibyl of the Rhine NULL
"Rites [li] rest on three bases: heaven and earth, which are the source of all life; the ancestors, who are the source of the human race; [and] sovereigns and teachers, who are the source of government... Should any of the three be missing, either there would be no people or people would be without peace. Hence rites are to serve Heaven on high and earth below, and to honor the ancestors and elevate the sovereigns and teachers... Who holds to the rites is never confused in the midst of multifarious change; who deviates therefrom is lost. Rites - are they not the culmination of culture?" - Hsun-Tzu NULL
"The whole sum of God that there is on earth, within all men, concentrates itself in a single cry to affirm the soul." - Victor Hugo
"`Mind’ and `matter’ appear as two aspects of our unitary mind-bodies. There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; they are both organs of evolving humanity… This earth is one of the rare spots in the cosmos where mind has flowered. Man is a product of nearly three billion years of evolution, in whose person the evolutionary process has at last become conscious of itself and its possibilities. Whether he likes it or not, he is responsible for the whole further evolution of our planet." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"Biology… has thus revealed man’s place in nature. Hs is the highest form of life produced by the evolutionary process on this planet, the latest dominant type, and the only organism capable of further advance or progress. Whether he knows it or not, whether he wishes it or not, he is now the main agency for the further evolution of the earth and its inhabitants. In other words, his destiny is to realize new possibilities for the whole terrestrial sector of the cosmic process, to be the instrument of further evolutionary progress on this planet." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." - Thomas Jefferson
"Those who labor on the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth." - Thomas Jefferson
"Lust for fame and fortune is like an intoxication. While a man is intoxicated, he doesn’t realize it. It’s only after it is all over that he realizes that everything is like an illusion. If men could realize this all the time, there would be much less trouble on earth, and there would be much happier people too." - Li Ju-chen
"I believe that only in broken gleams has the Sun of Truth yet shone upon men. I believe that love will finally establish the Kingdom of God upon earth, and the Cornerstones of that Kingdom will be Liberty, Truth, Brotherhood and Service. I believe that no good shall be lost, and that all man has willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist forever." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Man has dual citizenry. He loves both in time and in eternity; both in heaven and on earth. But he owes his ultimate allegiance to God." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The core paradox that underlies spirituality is the haunting sense of incompleteness, of being somehow unfinished, that comes from the reality of living on this earth as part and yet also not-part of it. For to be human is to be incomplete, yet year for completion; it is to be uncertain, yet long for certainty; to be imperfect, yet long for perfection; to be broken, yet crave wholeness. All these yearnings remain necessarily unsatisfied, for perfection, completion, certainty, and wholeness are impossible precisely because we are imperfectly human – or better, because we are perfectly human, which is to say humanly imperfect." - Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
"To be constantly without desire is the way to have a vision of the mystery of heaven and earth, for constantly to have desire is the means by which their limitations are seen." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me." - Abraham Lincoln
"We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that his nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." - Abraham Lincoln
"There is no nation on earth so dangers as a nation fully armed, and bankrupt at home." - Henry Cabot Lodge
"The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring - the earth from here is a vast ovation to the big vastness of space." - Jim Lovell, fully James "Jim" Arthur Lovell
"There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity." - Douglas MacArthur
"The power of population is infinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases at a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
"life begins here upon earth, and the soul of man lives and breathes where it loves; and love, in living faith, has strength enough to make the soul of man experience unity with God – two natures in a single spirit and love." - Jacques Maritain
"The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls." - Thomas Merton
"To apply the laws of the spirit to the activities of this earth is at once a desecration and denial of religion, and a bewildering and unsettling of the social order." - Paul Elmer More
"Everything is linked with everything else down to the lowest ring on the chain, and the true essence of God is above as well as below, in the heavens and on earth, and nothing exists outside Him." - Moses de León, known in Hebrew as Moshe ben Shem-Tov NULL
"Four simple questions have shaped the spiritual journeys of pilgrims and seekers for thousands of years. These questions enable us to gently awaken the four fundamental realms of inner life: Identity, Love, Daily Practice, and Kindness. (1) Who am I? We have within us an essential nature that is whole and unbroken. (2) What do I love? (3) How shall I live, knowing I will die? Every moment of life is a precious gift. (4) What is my gift to the family of the earth?" - Wayne Muller
"If we follow what we love, if we live deeply and attentively in this moment, we will not feel bound by regret at the moment of our death. We will live with reverence for all things and a deep gratefulness for the gift of a single day upon the earth." - Wayne Muller
"To live a day, to care for a single day, is to shape a life. Each day is an opportunity to choose where to place our care. What shall we do today? What simple acts of remembrance will we use to punctuate our time and enrich our walk upon the earth this single day?" - Wayne Muller
"One day we must go, one night we will descend into the region of mystery. Here, we only come to know ourselves; only in passing are we here on earth. In peace and pleasure let us spend our lives; come let us enjoy ourselves. Let not the angry do so; the earth is vast indeed! Would that one lived forever; would that one were not to die!" - Nahuatl Wise Men including Nezahualcoyotl NULL
"It was and it is to do all that can be done to eradicate an evil thing out of our civilization… a thing so incredibly wicked that it would not have been believable of modern man if it had not actually occurred. This evil, this wickedness began with intolerance and hate in a few men’s hearts. It spread until it almost wrecked the world. Now the obligation is to remember, not in hate, not in the spirit of revenge, but so that this spirit cannot ever flourish again so long as man remains on earth. And to this end, let us begin, each of us, by looking into our own hearts." - New York Times Editorial on the Holocaust NULL
"What does your mind seek? Where is your heart? If you give your heart to each and every thing, you lead it nowhere; you destroy your heart. Can anything be found on earth?" - Nezahualcoyotl NULL
"Evolution... is comprehensible only if we admit that it is dominated by a finality, a precise and distant goal... telefinality orients the march of evolution as a whole and has acted, ever since the appearance of life on earth, as a distant directing force tending to develop a being endowed with a conscience, a spiritually and morally perfect being. To attain this goal, this force acts on the laws of the unorganized world in such a way that the normal play of the second law of thermodynamics is always deflected in the same direction." -
"Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new, sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone!" - Ohiyesa of the Santee Dakota Sioux (The Winner), Indian name for Charles Alexander Eastman , first named Hakadah (the Pitiful Last One) NULL
"If God lived on earth, all his windows would be broken." - Yiddish Proverbs
"It is not safe to be immoral… Against the rock of moral law, earth’s conquerors and exploiters hurl themselves eventually to their own destruction. While yet there is time.. we must take steps to prevent the helpless rush of man to his doom." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
"It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters." - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
"We have not so much the privilege of intelligence, viewed as something above and against nonhuman nature, but the responsibility and necessity to convert our intelligence to the earth. We need to learn how to use intelligence to mend the distortions we have created and how to convert intelligence into an instrument that can cultivate the harmonies and balances of the ecological community and bring these to a refinement." - Rosemary Radford Ruether
"The whole earth cannot satisfy the lust of the flesh; who can do its will? To him who longs for the impossible come guilt and bafflement of desire; but he who is utterly without desire has a happiness that ages not." - Shantideva NULL
"The highest proof of the Spirit is love. Love is the eternal thing which men can already on earth possess as it really is." - Albert Schweitzer
"It is said: “When a mountain is piled up, the first basket of earth is the beginning of the end… and when one travels, the first step is the beginning of the arrival.”" - Seng-Chao or Sengzhao NULL
"The Perfect Way is difficult only for those who pick and choose; do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart: if you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease... There is no need to seek Truth; only stop having views... The ultimate Truth about both Extremes is that they are One Emptiness." -
"Self-discipline never means giving up anything - for giving up is a loss. Our Lord did not ask us to give up the things of earth, but to exchange them for better things." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
"These are our times and our responsibilities. Every human being has a sacred duty to protect the welfare of our Mother Earth, from whom all life comes. In order to do this we must recognize the enemy -- the one within us. We must begin with ourselves." - Leon Shenendoah, elected Tadodaho, aka Chief Leon Shenendoah
"Why must man meet this lovely day with solemn face and anxious knee? All the earth quivers in the ray of the kind sun, and only he walks down-eyed. More wise than we is every bud and bloom and pod. These hold Creations’ secret key - “Be still, and know that I am God.”" - Anne Higginson Spicer
"For some reason, too deep to fathom, men contend more furiously over the road to heaven, which they cannot see, than over their visible walks on earth." - Walter Parker Stacy