The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them ~ Walt Whitman

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and is the largest of the terr estrial planets in the Solar System, in both diameter and mass. Home to myriad species including humans, it is also referred to as "the Earth", "Planet Earth", "Gaia", "Terra", and "the World".

For quotes specifically concerning the personification of Earth, oft called Mother Nature or Mother Earth, see Mother Nature.  Note that there may invariably arise some justified overlap in the quotes between this page and that.

Quotes

In this broad earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed perfection. ~ Walt Whitman
Alphabetized by author
  • The Earth is the Mother, I am her Son.
    • Atharva Veda. Mâtâ bhûmih putro aham prthivyâh (12:1:12). quoted in Decolonizing the Hindu Mind (2001) by Koenraad Elst
  • Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
  • The earth was made so various, that the mind
    Of desultory man, studious of change
    And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
  • This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom, — the very fashion of which "passeth away."
    • François Fénelon, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 206.
  • Облетев Землю в корабле-спутнике, я увидел, как прекрасна наша планета. Люди, будем хранить и преумножать эту красоту, а не разрушать её!
    • Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!
      • Yuri Gagarin, Russian phrase, handwritten and signed after his historic spaceflight, photo of facsimile published in Syny goluboi planety 3rd.edition (1981) by L. Lebedev, A. Romanov, and B/ Luk'ianov; the first edition was translated into English as Sons of the Blue Planet (1973) by L. A. Lebedev
  • The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not for every man's greed.
  • In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies — even our dreams.
  • No matter where I go in the world, although I can't speak any foreign language, I don't feel out of place. I think of the earth as my home. If everyone thought this way, people might notice just how foolish international friction is, and they would put an end to it. We are, after all, at a point where it is almost narrow-minded to think merely in geocentric terms. Human beings have launched satellites into outer space, and yet they still grovel on earth looking at their own feet like wild dogs. What is to become of our planet?
  • I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our Nation. I believe it practically inexhaustible. It abounds all over the western country, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, and its development has scarcely commenced... Immigration, which even the war has not stopped, will land upon our shores hundred of thousands more per year from overcrowded Europe. I intend to point them to the gold and silver that waits for them in the West. Tell the miners from me, that I shall promote their interests to the utmost of my ability; because their prosperity is the prosperity of the Nation, and we shall prove in a very few years that we are indeed the treasury of the world.
    • Abraham Lincoln, message for the miners of the West, delivered verbally to Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax, who was about to depart on a trip to the West, in the afternoon of April 14, 1865, before Lincoln left for Ford's Theatre. Colfax delivered the message to a large crowd of citizens in Denver, Colorado, May 27, 1865. Reported in Edward Winslow Martin, The Life and Public Services of Schuyler Colfax (1868), p. 187–88.
  • To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold--brothers who know now they are truly brothers.
    • Archibald MacLeish, as quoted in Richard Milhous Nixon's First Inaugural Address (given January 20, 1969).
  • The modern scientific counterpart to belief in God is the belief in the universe as an organism: this disgusts me. This is to make what is quite rare and extremely derivative, the organic, which we perceive only on the surface of the earth, into something essential, universal, and eternal! This is still an anthropomorphizing of nature!
  • What have we done to the world, look what we've done
    What about all the peace that that you pledge your only son?
    What about flowering fields, is there a time?
    What about all the dreams that you said were yours and mine?
    Did you ever stop to notice all the children dead from war?
    Did you ever stop to notice the crying Earth, the weeping shores?
  • We are pilgrims, not settlers; this earth is our inn, not our home.
    • John Heyl Vincent, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 206.

  • The crucified planet Earth,
    should it find a voice
    and a sense of irony,
    might now well say
    of our abuse of it,
    "Forgive them, Father,
    They know not what they do."

    The irony would be
    that we know what
    we are doing.

    When the last living thing
    has died on account of us,
    how poetical it would be
    if Earth could say,
    in a voice floating up
    perhaps
    from the floor
    of the Grand Canyon,
    "It is done."
    People did not like it here.

  • The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore we've learned most of what we know. Recently we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting.
    • Carl Sagan,Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update) The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean [Episode 1], 03 min 55 sec
  • We’ve done such a rotten job managing our own planet, we should be very careful before trying to manage others.
  • We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, 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, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave—to the ancient enemies of man—half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.
    • Adlai Stevenson, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, last major speech, to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland (July 9, 1965); in Albert Roland, Richard Wilson, and Michael Rahill, eds., Adlai Stevenson of the United Nations (1965), p. 224.
  • Simonson, in rubber jacket and similar galoshes, bound with whip-cord over woolen socks (he was a vegetarian and did not use the skin of animals), was also awaiting the departure of the party. He stood near the entrance of the house, writing down in a note-book a thought that occurred to him. “If,” he wrote, “a bacterium were to observe and analyze the nail of a man, it would declare him an inorganic being. Similarly, from an observation of the earth’s surface, we declare it to be inorganic. That is wrong.”
  • The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.
    • Daniel Webster, remarks in the Senate (March 12, 1838); The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (1903), vol. 8, p. 177.
  • In this broad earth of ours,
    Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
    Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
    Nestles the seed perfection.

Bible

The Bible on Wikisource.
  • And again, observe ye the days of summer how the sun is above the earth over against it. And you seek shade and shelter by reason of the heat of the sun, and the earth also burns with growing heat, and so you cannot tread on the earth, or on a rock by reason of its heat.

King James Version (1611)

But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. ~ David
Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.
Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof,
That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof? ~ Book of Job
King James Version on Wikisource.
  • But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
  • For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.
  • Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.
    Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof,
    That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof?
  • And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation.

New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (1950)

  • Hope in Jehovah and follow his way,
And he will exalt you to take possession of the earth.
When the wicked are done away with, you will see it.
ר [Resh]
  • They will not cause any harm
    Or any ruin in all my holy mountain,
    Because the earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah
    As the waters cover the sea.
  • But the nations became wrathful, and your own wrath came, and the appointed time came for the dead to be judged and to reward your slaves the prophets and the holy ones and those fearing your name, the small and the great, and to bring to ruin those ruining the earth.

See also

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