Soil Quotes - Page 13

• Except for naval and air exercises, our military should be stationed on American soil, where service men and women can lead normal lives in close proximity to family and friends.

  Camille Paglia

  Military, Exercise, Men

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• Bad conduct soils the finest ornament more than filth.

  Plautus

  Ornaments, Filth, Finest

  "Mostellaria". Play by Plautus, I. 3. 133, 1866.

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• Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.

  Quintilian

  Agriculture, Students, Talent

  Quintilian (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Quintilian (Illustrated)”, p.17, Delphi Classics

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• We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace. Preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft.

  Adlai E. Stevenson

  Love, Peace, Nature

  Speech to Economic and Social Council of United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland, 9 July 1965

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• Planting native species in our gardens and communities is increasingly important, because indigenous insects, birds and wildlife rely on them. Over thousands, and sometimes millions, of years they have co-evolved to live in local climate and soil conditions.

  David Suzuki

  Garden, Years, Community

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• Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

  Jonathan Swift

  Strength, Men, Knowing

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.896, Delphi Classics

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• It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

  Jonathan Swift

  Strength, Men, Gold

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.896, Delphi Classics

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• I love Tennessee, but they don't have the pine trees and the sandy soil and the black water that I grew up around.

  Josh Turner

  Water, Tree, Black

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• The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.

  Simone Weil

  Tuberculosis, Poison, Disease

  Simone Weil (1962). “Selected Essays: 1934-1943”, London, Oxford U.P

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• If there is an art of living, it is not something that can be taught timelessly. We have lessons to learn from Aristotle et al, for sure, but not if we simply uproot them from their epoch and stamp them into 21st-century soil.

  Julian Baggini

  Art, Lessons, Als

  "Everyday wisdom" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. September 1, 2008.

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• Sturdy gospel roots that go deep into rich spiritual soil strengthen and steady us in times of trial and difficulty.

  David A. Bednar

  Spiritual, Roots, Trials

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• The essential fact which emerges ... is that the three smallest and most active reservoirs ( of carbon in the global carbon cycle), the atmosphere, the plants and the soil, are all of roughly the same size. This means that large human disturbance of any one of these reservoirs will have large effects on all three. We cannot hope either to understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too.

  Freeman Dyson

  Mean, Science, Carbon Cycle

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• When the sense of the earth unites with the sense of one's body, one becomes earth of the earth, a plant among plants, an animal born from the soil and fertilizing it. In this union, the body is confirmed in its pantheism.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Nature, Animal, Body

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• Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

  Jeffrey McDaniel

  Mermaid, Swim, Earth

  Jeffrey McDaniel (2002). “Splinter Factory”, p.55, Manic D Press

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• As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.

  Gary Snyder

  Ignorance, Animal, Solitude

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• The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Fate, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.3, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had wetted and stuck with his spit the morning he made Adam from dirt. Now, all these generations later, we people could still see on our skin the inherited prints of the dust specks of Eden.

  Annie Dillard

  Morning, Eden, Dust

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.28, Canongate Books

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• Even as a very young man, I knew that my family is like a plant. Uproot it, and it will wilt. Pluck away at it, and it will die. But leave it to thrive in the soil, untouched, and it will weather both gods and winds. It is born with the soil, and it will live so long as the soil shall live.

  Etgar Keret

  Men, Wind, Weather

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• Uniformity, in its motives, its goals, its far-ranging consequences, is the natural enemy of poetry, not to mention the enemy of trees, the soil, the exemplary life therein.

  C.D. Wright

  Goal, Tree, Enemy

  C.D. Wright (2012). “Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil”, p.29, Copper Canyon Press

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• taking her hand he led her out into a broad stretch of hard sandy soil that the moon flooded with great splendor. They floated out like drifting moths under the rich hazy light, and as the fantastic symphony wept and exulted and wavered and despaired, Ardita's last sense of reality dropped away, and she abandonded her imagination to the dreamy summer scents of tropial flowers and the infinite starry spaces overhead, feeling that if she opened her eyes it would be to find herself dancing with a ghost in a land created by her own fantasy.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Summer, Flower, Eye

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.1640, e-artnow

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• Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Nature, Children, Roots

  1850 The Scarlet Letter,'The Custom-House'.

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• In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that's why you're not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable.

  Primo Levi

  Order, Diversity, Growth

  Primo Levi (1995). “The Periodic Table”, Schocken

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• If the whole world I once could see On free soil stand, with the people free Then to the moment might I say, Linger awhile. . .so fair thou art.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, People, World

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• Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Sleep, Night, Ribs

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.76, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss. The I’ll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

  Jeffrey McDaniel

  Wall, Love You, Kissing

  Jeffrey McDaniel (2002). “Splinter Factory”, p.55, Manic D Press

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