Soil Quotes - Page 9

• A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings.

  Anton Chekhov

  Wall, Dirty, Ruins

  Letter to A.N. Kanaev, March 26, 1883.

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• Man is sitting disconsolate on an anthill one morning. God asks him what the matter is and man replies that the soil is too swampy for the cultivation of the yams which God has directed him to grow. God tells him to bring in a blacksmith to dry the soil with his bellows. The contribution of humanity to this creation is so important. God could have made the world perfect if he had wanted. But he made it the way it is. So that there is a constant need for us to discuss and cooperate to make it more habitable, so the soil can yield, you see.

  Chinua Achebe

  Morning, Men, Yield

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• Gershwin's tragedy was not that he failed to cross the tracks, but rather that he did, and once there in his new habitat, was deprived of the chance to plunge his roots firmly into the new soil.

  George Gershwin

  Roots, Track, Tragedy

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• Don't soil your pretty little shoes The gutter's deep and red Climb up climb up and ride along with me the tumbrel driver said But she never said a word never turned her head Don't soil your pretty little pants I only go one way Climb up climb up and ride along with me There's no gold coach today But she never said a word never turned her head

  Peter Weiss

  Shoes, Gold, Gutters

  Peter Weiss (1993). “Peter Weiss' The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat: As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade [a Play]”

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• Unless our souls had root in soil divine We could not bear earth's overwhelming strife. The fiercest pain that racks this heart of mine, Convinces me of everlasting life.

  Stefan Zweig

  Pain, Heart, Roots

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• The ability of human beings to be creative depends fundamentally on the health and well-being of our biosphere, the few kilometres of air, water, and soil that surround our planet like the skin of an apple. Quite simply, they are the physical and spiritual bases of our lives, and the only source of materials and tools.

  Freeman Patterson

  Spiritual, Air, Apples

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• Unlike the urban development that I see taking over and swallowing up our precious soil, when we interact with our environment in a way that allows for regeneration and natural spaces, the outcome can be beautiful.

  Cory Trepanier

  Beautiful, Urban Development, Space

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• It is the duty of every citizen, for his own welfare, if for no other patriotic reason, to support and fight for and possibly initiate measures having to do with conservation of soil, water and forests.

  Louis Bromfield

  Patriotic, Fighting, Water

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• Strange customs do not thrive in foreign soil.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Strange, Thrive, Customs

  "Demetrius". Book by Friedrich Schiller, I. 1, February 15, 1857.

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• Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Jesus, Fall, Home

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.37

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• Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted.

  Henry David Thoreau

  World, Exhausted, Crops

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walking: Top Essays”, p.14, 谷月社

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• There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.

  Washington Irving

  Weed, Roots, Tree

  Washington Irving (2015). “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. – The Complete Collection: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Voyage, Roscoe, A Royal Poet, A Sunday in London and many more (Illustrated)”, p.133, e-artnow

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• A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle: and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. In poetic minds and in popular enthusiasm this feeling becomes closely associated with the soil and the symbols of the country. But the secret sanctification of the soil and the symbol is the idea which they represent, and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol, as a lover kisses with rapture the glove of his mistress and wears a lock of her hair upon his heart.

  George William Curtis

  Loyalty, Country, Heart

  George William Curtis (1894). “On the principles and character of American institutions, and the duties of American citizens, 1856-1891”

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• Man's books are but man's alphabet,
  Beyond and on his lessons lie -
  The lessons of the violet,
  The large gold letters of the sky;
  The love of beauty, blossomed soil,
  The large content, the tranquil toil:
  The toil that nature ever taught,
  The patient toil, the constant stir,
  The toil of seas where shores are wrought,
  The toil of Christ, the carpenter;
  The toil of God incessantly
  By palm-set land or frozen sea.

  Joaquin Miller

  Lying, Book, Men

  "The Larger College". "In Classic Shades, and Other Poems". Book by Joaquin Miller, 1890.

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• A glad welcome to this affirmation by a group of psychologists that the self does not stop at the skin nor even with the circle of human relationships but is interwoven with the lives of trees and animals and soil; that caring for the deepest needs of persons and caring for our threatened planet are not in conflict.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Caring, Animal, Self

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• Mid-summer ... when the alchemy of Nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odours of the soil and the vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Summer, Nature, Past

  H. P. Lovecraft (2016). “H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ The Ultimate Horror Collection: 60 Occult & Supernatural Mysteries in One Volume: The Greatest Spine-Chilling and Blood-Curdling Stories of Terror & Macabre: The Call of Cthulhu, The White Ship, The Dunwich Horror, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Whisperer in Darknessäó_”, p.6, e-artnow

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• Literature, properly so called, draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mound of countless generations, and not from any top dressing capriciously scattered over the surface.

  James Russell Lowell

  Generations, Sap, Literature

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• Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil.

  Ambrose Bierce

  War, Men, Weapons

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2696, Delphi Classics

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• Habit is, of all the plants of human growth, the one that has the least need of nutritious soil in order to live, and is the first to appear on the most seemingly barren rock.

  Marcel Proust

  Rocks, Order, Growth

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume III: The Guermantes Way”, p.152, Modern Library

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• All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.

  Herbert Spencer

  Light, Organization, Evil

  Herbert Spencer (1873). “Social Statics; Or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, & the First of Them Developed”, p.73

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• Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world's unkindly weather.

  Isaac Barrow

  Pain, Night, Mushrooms

  Isaac Barrow (1831). “The works of Dr. Isaac Barrow”, p.241

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• Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

  Novalis

  Harvest, Poor, Modest

  Motto for "Pollen and Fragments" by Novalis, 1798.

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• If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.

  David Hume

  Weed, Art, Revenge

  David Hume (1817). “Philosophical Essays: On Morals, Literature, and Politics”, p.166

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• Still young and fine! but what is still in view We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new.

  Henry Vaughan

  Views, Young, Fine

  Henry Vaughan, Henry Francis Lyte (1871). “The Poetical Works of Herbert and Vaughan: With a Memoir”, p.223

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• The ignorant are like useless, brackish soil;
  They exist and that is all.

  Thiruvalluvar

  Ignorant, Useless

  "Tirukkural". Book by Thiruvalluvar, 1840.

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