Soil Quotes - Page 39

• In the seed and the soil, we find the answers to every one of the crises we face. The crises of violence and war. The crises of hunger and disease. The crisis of the destruction of democracy.

  Vandana Shiva

  War, Democracy, Faces

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• If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Political, Revolution, Ifs

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Three, Chapter XXI, 1840.

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• Our native soil draws all of us, by I know not what sweetness, and never allows us to forget.

  Ovid

  Forget, Homesickness, Sweetness

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• Must I thus leave thee, Paradise?-thus leave Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades?

  John Milton

  Happiness, Paradise, Shade

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1852). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors; and with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton, Derived Principally from Original Documents in Her Majesty's State-paper Office”, p.478

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• One year ago, on this occasion, I called your attention to the abuses that had crept into the distribution of our public funds, and I urged you and pleaded with you that, so far as the Church and its membership were concerned, we do not soil our hands with the bounteous outpouring of funds which the government was giving unto us. I renew that plea now. My brethren and sisters, for the sake of the government which we love, for the sake of the government which we believe was divinely inspired, be honest with it. Be honest, just ordinarily gold honest. That is all I ask.

  J. Reuben Clark

  Believe, Hands, Years

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• Because nitrous oxide [released by nitrate-fertilised soil] is 296 times stronger than CO₂ at global warming and methane [cow farts] is about 26 times as potent as CO₂, the combined greenhouse effect of our livestock worldwide is greater than the sum total of all the cars, trains, busses, trucks, ships, airplanes and jets.

  Thom Hartmann

  Airplane, Car, Environmental

  "Threshold: The Progressive Plan to Pull America Back from the Brink". Book by Thom Hartmann, p.22, July 23, 2009.

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• We realize the indivisibility of the earth - its soil, mountains, rivers, forests, climate, plants, and animals - and respect it collectively not only as a useful servant but as a living being, vastly less alive than ourselves in degree, but vastly greater than ourselves in time and space - a being that was old when the morning stars sang together, and when the last of us has been gathered unto his fathers, will still be young.

  Aldo Leopold

  Morning, Stars, Father

  "The River of the Mother of God: and other Essays by Aldo Leopold".

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• The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Winter, Snow, Months

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.63, Courier Corporation

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• What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?

  Ronald Reagan

  War, People, What If

  Ronald Reagan (2011). “An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography”, p.494, Simon and Schuster

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• The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple-universe.

  Annie Dillard

  Home, Men, Cells

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• Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life-the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids-is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.

  Michael Pollan

  Taken, Mean, Simple

  Michael Pollan (2009). “The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World”, p.15, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Saints can spring from any soil.

  John Steinbeck

  Spring, Saint

  John Steinbeck (1952). “East of Eden, And, The Wayward Bus”

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• Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees... . Abused soil brings forth stunted growths.

  Margaret Sanger

  Perfect, Tree, Growth

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• After his death the gardener does not become a butterfly, intoxicated by the perfumes of the flowers, but a garden worm tasting all the dark, nitrogenous, and spicy delights of the soil.

  Karel Capek

  Flower, Butterfly, Dark

  Karel Capek (2002). “The Gardener's Year”

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• Untilled soil, however fertile it may be, will bear thistles and thorns; so it is with man's mind.

  Teresa of Avila

  Men, Mind, May

  Saint Teresa (of Avila) (1957). “The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus: Book of the foundations. Minor prose works. Poems. Documents. Indices”

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• If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

  John Jay Chapman

  Party, Curiosity, Magic

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• You work here [on the farm] simply without philosophizing; sometimes the work is hard and crowded with pettiness. But at times you feel a surge of cosmic exaltation, like the clear light of the heavens... . And you, too, seem to be taking root in the soil which you are digging, to be nourished by the rays of the sun, to share life with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower; living in nature's depths, you seem then to rise and grow into the vast expanse of the universe.

  A. D. Gordon

  Flower, Land, Roots

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• Colonial atrocities have prepared the soil; it is for socialists to sow the seeds of revolution.

  Ho Chi Minh

  Atrocities, Revolution, Prepared

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• From the seed grows a root, then a sprout; from the sprout, the seedling leaves; from the leaves, the stem; around the stem, the branches; at the top, the flower. . . We cannot say that the seed causes the growth, nor that the soil does. We can say that the potentialities for growth lie within the seed, in mysterious life forces, which, when properly fostered, take on certain forms.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Lying, Flower, Roots

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• A seed has to get buried in the soil for its real form as a plant to emerge. Only through modesty and humility can we grow. Pride and conceit will only destroy us. Live with the firm attitude, 'I am everyone's servant.' Then the whole universe will bow down to us.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Attitude, Real, Humility

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• A manure containing several ingredients acts in this wise: The effect of all of them in the soil accommodates itself to that one among them which, in comparison to the wants of the plant, is present in the smallest quantity.

  Justus von Liebig

  Wise, Science, Want

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• Plants, in a state of nature, are always warring with one another, contending for the monopoly of the soil,-the stronger ejecting the weaker,-the more vigorous overgrowing and killing the more delicate. Every modification of climate, every disturbance of the soil, every interference with the existing vegetation of an area, favours some species at the expense of others.

  Joseph Dalton Hooker

  Science, Stronger, Climate

  Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, Thomas Thomson (1855). “Introductory essay to the Flora Indica: including preliminary observations on the study of Indian botany; a summary of the labours of Indian botanists; a sketch of the meteorology of India; outlines of the physical geography and botany of the provinces of India: With 2 Maps. By J. D. Hooker and Thomas Thomson. Reprinted from the "Flora Indica"”, p.41

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• I'm amazed at how much my writing is improved when I step away from the computer, even in small amounts. If I'm stuck, I vacuum the living room or walk the dog. I'm amazed at what comes out of that... We have to realize that part of the writing life where we're sitting down at the computer is harvesting the crops, but you have to have planted them and watered them and created fertile soil - and that's a life.

  Donald Miller

  Dog, Writing, Sitting

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• What is nobler than a man wresting and wringing his bread from the stubborn soil by the sweat of his brow and the break of his back for his wife and children!

  William Morris Hunt

  Children, Men, Sweat

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• We're phenomenally blessed in the Walla Walla Valley. We have great, complex soil that's nutrient-rich but fairly porous.

  Drew Bledsoe

  Blessed, Valleys, Rich

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