Soil Quotes - Page 7

• When there are enough people on the land to use it but not enough to husband it, then the wildness of the soil that we call fertility begins to diminish, and the soil itself begins to flee from us in water and wind.

  Wendell Berry

  Husband, Wind, Land

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• You can't tear up everything just to get the dollar out of it without suffering as result. It is a travesty to burn our woods and thereby burn up the fertilizer nature has provided for us. We must enrich our soil every year instead of merely depleting it. It is fundamental that nature will drive away those who commit sin against it.

  George Washington Carver

  Years, Land, Suffering

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• If in the human economy, a squash in the field is worth more than a bushel of soil, that does not mean that food is more valuable than soil; it means simply that we do not know how to value the soil. In its complexity and its potential longevity, the soil exceeds our comprehension; we do not know how to place a just market value on it, and we will never learn how. Its value is inestimable; we must value it, beyond whatever price we put on it, by respecting it.

  Wendell Berry

  Mean, Land, Squash

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• The damages of our present agriculture all come from the determination to use the life of the soil as if it were an extractable resource like coal.

  Wendell Berry

  Determination, Land, Agriculture

  Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.73, Counterpoint

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• The farmer and the farm, like "the environment," are looked upon, for example, as means to offset trade deficits. The farm is a place where we can externalize costs. The cost of pesticides to the farmer and the cost of the pesticides to the soil and groundwater are regarded similarly by the public: "a serious problem that something ought to be done about." But the problem is more fundamental than this glib statement would indicate, for soil pollution is an expense of production. So are pesticides and nitrates in our farm wells. So is the loss of farmers from the land.

  Wes Jackson

  Mean, Loss, Land

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• The shadow is not a problem to be solved or an enemy to be conquered, but a fertile field to be cultivated. When we dig our hands into its rich soil we will discover the potent seeds of the people we most desire to be.

  Debbie Ford

  Hands, People, Enemy

  Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Debbie Ford (2010). “The Shadow Effect: Illuminating the Hidden Power of Your True Self”, p.5, Harper Collins

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• Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a piece of it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Men, Toil, Pieces

  Charles Dudley Warner (1872). “Back-log studies and My summer in a garden”

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• Freedom's soil hath only place For a free and fearless race!

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Freedom, Race, Fearless

  John Greenleaf Whittier (1873). “The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier”, p.66

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• My music came up from the soil of North Carolina.

  Earl Scruggs

  North Carolina, Carolina

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• Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison-- Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion.

  Philip Larkin

  Work, Toads, Bills

  'Toads' (1955)

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• The so-called mother of the child isn't the child's begetter, but only a sort of nursing soil for the new-sown seed. The man, the one on top, is the true parent, while she, a stranger, foster's a stranger's sprout.

  Aeschylus

  Mother, Children, Nursing

  Aeschylus (2011). “The Complete Aeschylus: Volume I: The Oresteia”, p.174, Oxford University Press

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• Why, I say, that to tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection; it is plunder, and I entirely disclaim it; but I ask you to protect the rights and interests of labour generally in the first place, by allowing no free imports from countries which meet you with countervailing duties; and, in the second place, with respect to agricultural produce, to compensate the soil for the burdens from which other classes are free by an equivalent duty. This is my view of what is called "protection."

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Country, Rights, Views

  Benjamin Disraeli's speech in the House of Commons, May 14, 1850.

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• Work my hands in the soil, what's the pay for all the toil? Dust for blood, dust for blood, dust for blood.

  Don McLean

  Work, Dust, Blood

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• Short version: For the child. . ., it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. . . . It is more important to pave the way for a child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts that he is not ready to assimilate.

  Rachel Carson

  Children, Garden, Important

  Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson (1972). “The house of life: Rachel Carson at work”

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• One of the marked superiorities the English enjoy over other peoples is their ability to imbue the foreigner with a crippling inferiority complex the moment he sets foot on British soil.

  Pierre Daninos

  Feet, Inferiority, Moments

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• The lessons we learn in sadness and from loss are those that abide. Sorrow clarifies the mind, steadies it, and forces it to weigh things correctly. The soil moist with tears best feeds the seeds of truth.

  Theodore T. Munger

  Gratitude, Sadness, Loss

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• And in that hour,
  The seeds of cruelty, that since have swell'd
  To such gigantic and enormous growth,
  Were sown in human nature's fruitful soil.
  Hence date the persecution and the pain
  That man inflicts on all inferior kinds,
  Regardless of their plaints.

  William Cowper

  Pain, Men, Animal

  William Cowper (1872). “The poetical works of William Cowper: Complete ed., with memoir, explanatory notes etc”, p.318

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• And so when we talk about intangible values remember that they cannot be separated from the others. The conservation of waters, forests, soils, and wildlife are all involved with the conservation of the human spirit. The goal we all strive toward is happiness, contentment, the dignity of the individual, and the good life. This goal will elude us forever if we forget the importance of the intangibles.

  Sigurd F. Olson

  Good Life, Elude Us, Water

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• Brothers and sisters, love the earth. Be true to the earth, and do not believe those seducers who look longingly to the world beyond, casting suspicion on this world. Jesus is the greatest friend of the earth-Jesus who again and again, in the original spirit of Judaism, proclaimed love for the soil and love for the land. "Blessed are the peacemakers," he said, "for they shall possess the earth."

  Eberhard Arnold

  Jesus, Brother, Believe

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• Soils could also be giving up their carbon stores: evidence emerged in 2005 that a vast expanse of western Siberia was undergoing an unprecedented thaw. The region, the largest frozen peat bog in the world, had begun to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago. Scientists believe the bog could begin to release billions of tonnes of methane locked up in the soils, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The World Meteorological Organisation recently reported the largest annual rise of methane levels in the atmosphere for a decade.

  David Adam

  Giving Up, Believe, Years

  "Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst" by David Adam, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2008.

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• Still this planet's soil for noble deeds grants scope abounding.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Noble, Deeds, Doing Your Best

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1976). “Faust: a tragedy : backgrounds and sources, the author on the drama, contemporary reactions, modern criticism”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• There's not a ship that sails the ocean, But every climate, every soil, Must bring its tribute, great or small, And help to build the wooden wall!

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Wall, Ocean, Climate

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1871). “The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”, p.184

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• How about this miracle... God says if you plant the seed I will make the tree. Wow, you can't have a better arrangement than that. First, it gives God the tough end of the deal. What if you had to make a tree? That would keep you up late at night trying to figure out how to make a tree. God says, "No, leave the miracle part to me. I've got the seed, the soil, the sunshine, the rain and the seasons. I'm God and all this miracles stuff is easy for me. I have reserved something very special for you and that is to plant the seed.

  Jim Rohn

  Rain, Sunshine, Night

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• No art can be grafted with success on another art. For though they all profess the same origin, and to proceed from the same stock, yet each has its own peculiar modes both of imitating nature and of deviating from it... The deviation, more especially, will not bear transplantation to another soil.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Art, Copying, Peculiar

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1846). “The Literary Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: ... to which is Prefixed, a Memoir of the Author; with Remarks on His Professional Character, Illustrative of His Principles and Practice”, p.73

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• Or will it take some cataclysmic act of violence on U.S. soil to finally awaken our gamesmen to the costs of global hegemony?

  Pat Buchanan

  Hegemony, Cost, Violence

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