Earth Is Closed Quotes & Sayings

The smallest world on earth is that which is created by a closed mind. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Do you think you love that fellow?"
"I don't know." She closed her eyes, but the tears overflowed nevertheless. "All I know is that he opened a door into a whole new world I never even knew existed. I've stepped through that door, and I cant return.
( ... )
Its like being blind from birth and then one day suddenly being able to see. And not just see, but to witness the sun rising in all her glory across the azure sky. The dusky lavenders and blues lightening to pinks and reds, spreading across the horizon until the entire earth is lit. Until one has to blink and fall to ones knees in awe at the light.
( ... )
Even if one were to be made blind again in the next instant, one would ever after remember and know what was missed. What could be. — Elizabeth Hoyt

I pictured the first time we saw the girl, breezing past us in that Lincoln, blond hair whirling around her, her glasses tipped down, her smile, the stroke of her fingers. The teasing.
Simon tumbled the meteorite around in the sweat of his hand. I wondered what it would be like to look down at the earth, to fall, to burn brilliantly in the air like the image of the girl who passed by, kicking back dust like cosmic ash, and could she see that, now; was she up there above us?
I wondered.
We closed our eyes. — Andrew Smith

To see you naked is to remember the Earth,
the smooth Earth, clean of horses,
the Earth without reeds, pure form,
closed to the future, confine of silver.
To see you naked is to understand the desire
of rain that looks for the delicate waist,
or the fever of the broad-faced sea
that cannot find the light of its cheek.
Blood will ring through the bedrooms
and will come with flaming swords,
but you will not know the hiding places
of the violet or the heart of the toad.
Your womb is a struggle of roots.
Your lips are a dawn without contour.
Under the lukewarm roses of the bed
the dead men moan, awaiting their return. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Naturally, the system would have to be rigidly closed, recycling all food, air, and other expendables. But, of course, that's just how the Earth operates - on a slightly larger scale. — Arthur C. Clarke

Waking up was sheer delight for him: he always showed a naive and simple amazement at the discovery that he was back on earth; he was sincerely pleased. She, on the other hand, awoke with great reluctance, with a desire to stave off the day by keeping her eyes closed. — Milan Kundera

I closed my eyes and listened to the waves. Thousands of fish out there, eating each other. Endless mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting. The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting, and fucking. — Charles Bukowski

The fatalism of the limits-to-growth alternative is reasonable only if one ignores all the resources beyond our atmosphere, resources thousands of times greater than we could ever obtain from our beleaguered Earth. As expressed very beautifully in the language of House Concurrent Resolution 451, 'This tiny Earth is not humanity's prison, is not a closed and dwindling resource, but is in fact only part of a vast system rich in opportunities ... ' — Gerard K. O'Neill

Mine, I thought deliriously, as a shadow swept over us, like a cape had been thrown over the sky.
Mine, as my hands stroked up that strong back, velvety and warm, where every dip and line of muscle fit sweetly into my palms.
Mine, as the storm trembled in the air around us, and shook the earth beneath us.
"Mine," I murmured, as blue eyes met mine, wide and startled. And then closed again as he took my breath in a kiss so consuming that I barely noticed when the storm continued on toward the horizon, the midnight wings showing vague starlight through in patches as it passed overhead.
As it missed us.
"Yours," Louis-Cesare groaned — Karen Chance

If Earth is considered a closed system, there will be less for all forever. The frontier is closed, the wilderness is gone, nature is being destroyed by human consumers, while billions are starving. The future indeed looks grim, and there are, ultimately, no really long-range, positive solutions, nor motivation for making the sacrifices and doing the hard work needed now, unless we understand that we are evolving from an Earth-only toward an Earth-space or universal species. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

The Resurrection is not a single event, but a loosening of God's power and light into the earth and history that continues to alter all things, infusing them with the grace and power of God's own holiness. It is as though a door was opened, and what poured out will never be stopped, and that door cannot be closed. — Megan McKenna

Intercession is truly universal work for the Christian. No place is closed to intercessory prayer. No continent - no nation - no organization - no city - no office. There is no power on earth that can keep intercession out. — Richard Halverson

Mrs. Mudkin closed her eyes. "We should pray."
"I ain't praying," Crazy Cora said.
Mrs. Mudkin said, "Lord, please bless
"
"I ain't praying."
"
this land and the people who
"
"I ain't praying."
"
have toiled on this earth
"
"Stop that praying."
"I can pray if I want to."
"Then be quiet about it. — Sharon Creech

A wind blew, and the sand around his drawing scattered. He wrapped his fingers inside his wife's, and Father Time rekindled a connection he had only ever had with her. He surrendered to that sensation and felt the final drops of their lives touch one another, like water in a cave, top meets bottom, Heaven meets Earth.
As their eyes closed, a different set of eyes opened, and they rose from the ground as a shared south, up and up, a sun and a moon in a single sky. — Mitch Albom

He was saved from having to reply by Philippa, turning to face them. "What on earth? Do you see this?"
He had not been paying attention, but Olivia was now alternately pantomiming cracking a whip, and screwing up her face, eyes tightly closed, teeth bared, with her fingers splayed out at either edge of her mouth.
"Driving a squid! Whipping the sunshine!" the marchioness called out, pride in her tone, drawing laughter from the rest of the room.
"Driving a Squid is a play I would dearly love to read," Philippa said on a giggle, turning back to Penelope. "Penny, really. We could use your help. — Sarah MacLean

As a child, when I first heard the story of Creation, I'd closed my eyes and pictured the earth as a ball rolling off the palm of God and into dark space, then drifting around until it found its home in sunny orbit. Never perfect, but ever spinning, and holding on to her course, despite it all. — Ann Howard Creel

You go back," Jack said. "And you catch the scum who did you." "Back?" I said. "Back to ... " "Earth, yeah," Jack said. "Chicago." He closed the folder and dropped it into his out-box. "You gotta find out who killed you." I arched an eyebrow at him. "You're kidding. — Jim Butcher

I only had one thought as the blackness closed in, drawing me back to my beloved earth. I was going back to the life I'd known before, the life I'd missed and longed for ... but there in Xavier's arms, I was already home. — Alexandra Adornetto

As suburban children we floated at night in swimming pools the temperature of blood; pools the color of Earth as seen from outer space. We would float and be naked - pretending to be embryos, pretending to be fetuses - all of us silent save for the hum of the pool filter. Our minds would be blank and our eyes closed as we floated in warm waters, the distinction between our bodies and our brains reduced to nothing - bathed in chlorine and lit by pure blue lights installed underneath diving boards. Sometimes we would join hands and form a ring like astronauts in space; sometimes when we felt more isolated in our fetal stupor we would bump into each other in the deep end, like twins with whom we didn't even know we shared a womb. — Douglas Coupland

I turned my face into Japhrimel's shoulder. "You're going to disappear," I said into his coat, not even caring that I knew what it was made of. "Just stay for a moment, just please just for a minute, a second - "
"Dante." His fingers came up, tangled in my already-tangled hair. "I heard you calling me. I tried to answer."
"Just for a few seconds." I buried my face in his coat, his other arm closed around me. I inhaled the smell of cinnamon, of amber musk, the deadly smoky nonphysical fragrance of demons. Filled my lungs with the breath of life. "Before I have to burn this whole fucking place down."
"Be still," he answered. "I am here, I have never left your side. I told you, you will not leave me to
wander the earth alone. — Lilith Saintcrow

In the bazaar today I noticed a shopkeeper sitting cross-legged on the platform of his shop making up his ledger. A common sight - but there was something wrong, I could not at first see what. Then I understood: what was his heavy ledge resting on? It was lying open before him, on his stomach, but unsupported by his free hand, not resting against his knees. What on earth was propping it up?
The problem teased my mind so much that I had to retrace my steps for another look. There he was, comfortably scribbling away in the large ledger, which was standing up, apparently unsupported, in his lap. Then, as I stared, he closed it, and got to his feet - and the mystery was explained. He had elephantiasis of the scrotum, and had been utilising this huge football of tissue as a book-rest. — J.R. Ackerley

He started to say something, maybe an apology and maybe not, and then he stopped, he leaned over and pulled me toward him - like by gravitational force. He kissed me, hard, and his skin was stubbly and rough against my cheek. My first thought was, I guess he didn't have time to shave this morning, and then - I was kissing him back, my fingers winding through his soft yellow hair and my eyes closed. He kissed like he was drowning and I was air. It was passionate, and desperate, and like nothing I had ever experienced before.
This was what people meant when they said the earth stopped turning. It felt like a world outside of that car, that moment, didn't exist. It was just us. — Jenny Han

I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep. — Haruki Murakami

I closed my eyes. The only things I knew about why Empty Ones worked the way we did was that we had room for extra souls because we started out with less, and that we could make gates because of our innately human sense of home. But my home was here. How on earth was I supposed to find another one?
"The gate needs to be opened and closed before dawn," Cresseda said, a hint of strain flowing through her voice.
"YES. THANKS FOR THAT. VERY HELPFUL RIGHT NOW. — Kiersten White

How do we distinguish between the legitimate skepticism of those who scoffed at cold fusion, and the stifling dogma of the seventeenthcentury clergymen who, doubting Galileo's claim that the earth was not the center of the solar system, put him under house arrest for the last eight years of his life? In part, the answer lies in the distinction between skepticism and closed-mindedness. Many scientists who were skeptical about cold fusion nevertheless tried to replicate the reported phenomenon in their own labs; Galileo's critics refused to look at the pertinent data. — Thomas Gilovich

I thought that you would be frozen in awe when you found the sequence, when you heard a bird's song repeating my Morse code, my cry for help, my S.O.S, when you saw the same numbers in the petals of a flower and the structure of a pine cone, when you saw with your own eyes the interconnectedness of all things.
But I was wrong.
You searched for a male god, a creator, an intelligent designer, or you banished the beauty and mystery of the world beneath the cold concrete grave of closed-eye skepticism. The few of you who could still hear my music felt tortured and misunderstood; you reached out for any conspiracy theory large enough to explain your alienated despair, your sense that the Earth was dying and no one cared.
But listen to me -- you are not alone. Run your fingers through the grass and grab it in your fists, feel my pulse echoing through your blood. You. Are. Not. Alone. And I -- I am not dead yet. — Sarah Warden

She came upon a bankside of lavender crocuses. The sun was on them for the moment, and they were opened flat, great five-pointed, seven-pointed lilac stars, with burning centres, burning with a strange lavender flame, as she had seen some metal burn lilac-flamed in the laboratory of the hospital at Islington. All down and oak-dry bankside they burned their great exposed stars. And she felt like going down on her knees and bending her forehead to the earth in an oriental submission, they were so royal, so lovely, so supreme. She came again to them in the morning, when the sky was grey, and they were closed, sharp clubs, wonderfully fragile on their stems of sap, among leaves and old grass and wild periwinkle. They had wonderful dark stripes running up their cheeks, the crocuses, like the clear proud stripes on a badger's face, or on some proud cat. She took a handful of the sappy, shut, striped flames. In her room they opened into a grand bowl of lilac fire. — D.H. Lawrence

Journey by Train Stretched across counties, countries, the train Rushes faster than memory through the rain. The rise of each hill is a musical phrase. Listen to the rhythm of space, how it lies, How it rolls, how it reaches, what unwinding relays Of wood and meadow where the red cows graze Come back again and again to closed eyes - That garden, that pink farm, that village steeple, And here and there the solitary people Who stand arrested when express trains pass, That stillness of an orchard in deep grass. Yet landscapes flow like this toward a place, A point in time and memory's own face. So when the clamor stops, we really climb Down to the earth, closing the curve of time, Meeting those we have left, to those we meet Bringing our whole life that has moved so fast, And now is gathered up and here at last, To unroll like a ribbon at their feet. — May Sarton

Sonnet V
I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place
patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle
and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches
so I carry faraway's land and it carries me on travel's road
On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves
a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time.
I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds
that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens
Out of jasmine the night's blood streams white. Your perfume,
my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. And your hair
is a tent of wind autumn in color. I walk along with speech
to the last of the words a bedouin told a pair of doves
I palpate you as a violin palpates the silk of the faraway time
and around me and you sprouts the grass of an ancient place - anew — Mahmoud Darwish

Ram, taken by surprise at what was happening, rushed to stop his wife, hold her hand and pull her out, but the earth had closed before he could reach her. All that he could clutch were the ends of her hair that turned into blades of grass. Would the pain have been less had she chastised him before she left? Would the pain have been less had they at least spoken before she left? Would the pain have been less had she at least looked at him before she left? But then she was under no obligation. He had liberated her long ago from the burden of being Ram's wife. But he would always be Sita's husband. — Devdutt Pattanaik

They set forth in a crimson dawn where sky and earth closed in a razorous plane. Out there dark little archipelagos of cloud and the vast world of sand and scrub shearing upward into the shoreless void where those blue islands trembled and the earth grew uncertain, gravely canted and veering out through tinctures of rose and the dark beyond the dawn to the uttermost rebate of space. — Cormac McCarthy

Look, Gail." Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. "Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That's the meaning of life."
"Your strength?"
"Your work." He tossed the branch aside. "The material the earth offers you and what you make of it ... — Ayn Rand

Because imaginary time behaves like another direction in space, histories in imaginary time can be closed surfaces, like the surface of the Earth, with no [existential] beginning or end. — Stephen Hawking

The casket was gunmetal gray with a blanket of white lilies covering the closed lid. The smell of wet earth was pungent as the machine lowered his body into the grave. Claire's knees went weak. Her grandmother stroked her back. Her mother offered her arm. Claire shook her head. She thought of strong things: iron. Steel. Paul. It was not until they were climbing into the back of the black limousine that Claire truly understood that she would never see her husband again. — Karin Slaughter

My gaze returns to earth and when it does, it's her eyes I see. Not the way I used to see them - around every corner, behind my own closed lids at the start of each day. Not in the way I used to imagine them in the eyes of every other girl I laid on top of. No, this time it really is her eyes. A photo of her, dressed in black, a cello leaning against one shoulder like a tired child. Her hair is up in one of those buns that seem to be a requisite for classical musicians. She used to wear it up like that for recitals and chamber music concerts, but with little pieces hanging down, to soften the severity of the look. There are no tendrils in this photo. I peer closer at the sign. YOUNG CONCERT SERIES PRESENTS MIA HALL. — Gayle Forman

Each of us comes into life with fists closed, set for aggressiveness and acquisition. But when we abandon life our hands are open; there is nothing on earth that we need, nothing the soul can take with it. — Fulton J. Sheen

They believed us and perished for it. Our statecraft, our learning
Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning
Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour -
Not since her birth has our Earth seen such worth loosed upon her.
Nor was their agony brief, or once only imposed on them.
The wounded, the war-spent, the sick received no exemption:
Being cured they returned and endured and achieved our redemption,
Hopeless themselves of relief, till Death, marvelling, closed on them.
That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given
To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven -
By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the wires -
To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes - to be cindered by fires -
To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation
From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.
But who shall return us the children? — Rudyard Kipling

The world, in resting upon the earth, strives to surmount it. As self-opening it cannot endure anything closed. The earth, however, as sheltering and concealing, tends always to draw the world into itself and keep it there — Martin Heidegger

Celaena stared at the dark, tilled earth, a chill wind rustling her veil.
Her chest ached, but this was the one last thing she had to do, the one last honor she could give her friend.
Celaena tilted her head to the sky, closed her eyes, and began to sing. — Sarah J. Maas

The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves.
It was a time of quiet and of waiting. The air was cold and tender. A light wind blew up from the southwest so that the farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain before long; but fog and rain did not go together. — John Steinbeck

Closing his eyes again, Beck repositions his head on the back of his seat, and in one sure movement, reaches over and grabs my hand. Even with his eyes closed, he knew where to find me. I want to cry for a thousand reasons, laugh for a thousand others; this is my anomalous balance, the place where Beck and I can let the ridiculousness of our collective sentences marinate, and other things, too. It's a singular moment of clarity between two people, and rare or not, I'm not about to let go.
I'm done roaming hillsides.
I've scoured the corners of the earth.
And I've found my people.
God, I'm almost jealous of myself.
Holding Beck's hand in my lap, I find a courage I never knew I had and drop my head on his shoulder. — David Arnold

Nothing on earth or beyond it is closed to the power of man's reason. — Ayn Rand

It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city. At all hours it was necessary to keep a lamp lighted, and Mrs. Miller lost track of the days: Friday was no different from Saturday and on Sunday she went to the grocery: closed, of course. — Truman Capote

God, help me ... did you send her to me? Because it felt like you did. It felt like you put her on this earth to find me and take over my very being with her goodness. I closed my eyes and hoped so. — Shelly Crane

Or I would be the rain itself, wreathing over the island, mingling in the quiet of moist places, filling its pores with its saturated breaths. And I would be the wind, whispering through the tangled woods, running airy fingers over the island's face, tingling in the chill of concealed places, sighing secrets in the dawn. And I would be the light, flinging over the island, covering it with flash and shadow, shining on rocks and pools, softening to a touch in the glow of dusk. If I were the rain and wind and light, I would encircle the island like the sky surrounding earth, flood through it like a heart driven pulse, shine from inside it like a star in flames, burn away to blackness in the closed eyes of its night. There are so many ways I could love this island, if I were the rain. — Richard Nelson

They all watched silently as she walked toward her cabin, but when she got to the doorway she stopped and turned around. She stood for a moment with her chin lifted and her eyes closed. What on earth was she doing? Granada wondered. — Jonathan Odell

If the day is done, if birds sing no more, if the wind has flagged tired, then draw the veil of darkness thick upon me, even as thou hast wrapt the earth with the coverlet of sleep and tenderly closed the petals of the drooping lotus at dusk. From the traveller, whose sack of provisions is empty before the voyage is ended, whose garment is torn and dustladen, whose strength is exhausted, remove shame and poverty, and renew his life like a flower under the cover of thy kindly night. — Rabindranath Tagore

The world soon to be largely populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anynymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell. The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond. — Cormac McCarthy

So, I said, when does the enchantment start? We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains. "It started when the earth was born." Her eyes were closed. Her face was golden in the setting sun. "It never stops. It is, always. It's just here. — Jerry Spinelli

Slowly, his eyes came up and he looked through the kitchen window and out through the Cahuenga Pass. The lights of Hollywood glimmered in the cut, a mirror reflection of the stars of all galaxies everywhere. He thought about all that was bad out there. A city with more things wrong than right. A place where the earth could open up beneath you and suck you into the blackness. A city of lost light. His city. It was all of that and, still, always still, a place to begin again. His city. The city of the second chance.
Bosch nodded and bent down. He closed his eyes, put his hands under the water and brought them up to his face. The water was cold and bracing, as he thought any baptism, the start of any second chance, should be. — Michael Connelly

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. — Joseph Conrad

I closed my eyes, overwhelmed with the wine, with her, with the impossibility of explaining it. It's just - his last moments on earth, you know? And the space between my life, and his, was very, very thin. There wasn't any space. It was like something opened up between us. Like a huge flash of what was real what mattered, No me, no him. We were the same person. Same thoughts - we didn't have to talk. It was just a few minutes but it might have been years, we might as well still be there. — Donna Tartt

After man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world. Later, as the earth's span closed, the transferred minds would again migrate through time and space
to another stopping place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury. But there would be races after them, clinging pathetically to the cold planet and burrowing to its horror-filled core, before the utter end. — H.P. Lovecraft

He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them. There were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many that had been almost strangers peering intrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were faces that the grave had changed and closed upon, but which the mind, superior to its power, still dressed in their old freshness and beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from earth only to be set up as a light, to shed a soft and gentle glow upon the path to Heaven... — Charles Dickens

Your skin is prickly from fatigue and pain and there is a hissing in your ears. Time passes and the pills are taking hold like a glowing white planet coming into view. A reverse eclipse. And you watch with your eyes closed. The white planet is half exposed, it grips your heart in its light and seems to be pulling you forward and now you feel that you are falling. You are awake but dreaming. "The earth is not beautiful but the universe is," you say. — Patrick DeWitt

The door closed behind them. They climbed out of the earth; and, still climbing, rose above it. They were in the rainbow. Far abroad, over ocean and land, they could see through its transparent walls the earth beneath their feet. Stairs beside stairs wound up together, and beautiful beings of all ages climbed along with them.
They knew that they were going up to the country whence the shadows fall.
And by this time I think they must have got there. — George MacDonald

Mary's Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest...
you who have had so far
to come.) Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by doves' voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must seen him torn. — Luci Shaw

[N]early every creationist debater will mention the second law of thermodynamics and argue that complex systems like the earth and life cannot evolve, because the second law seems to say that everything in nature is running down and losing energy, not getting more complex. But that's NOT what the second law says; every creationist has heard this but refuses to acknowledge it. The second law only applies to closed systems, like a sealed jar of heated gases that gradually cools down and loses energy. But the earth is not a closed system
it constantly gets new energy from the sun, and this (through photosynthesis) is what powers life and makes it possible for life to become more complex and evolve. It seems odd that the creationists continue to misuse the second law of thermodynamics when they have been corrected over and over again, but the reason is simple: it sounds impressive to their audience with limited science education, and if a snow job works, you stay with it. — Donald R. Prothero

The Forest of Dean. Here we lived in one of a row of small stone cottages with trees stretching over us like children doing ghost impressions with their hands, surrounded by closed coal mines slowly getting zipped back up into the earth. — Kate Hamer

The physical heart, which houses the spiritual heart, beats about 100,000 times a day, pumping two gallons of blood per minute and over 100 gallons per hour. If one were to attempt to carry 100 gallons of water (whose density is lighter than blood) from one place to another, it would be an exhausting task. Yet the human heart does this every hour of every day for an entire lifetime without respite. The vascular system transporting life-giving blood is over 60,000 miles long - more than two times the circumference of the earth. So when we conceive of our blood being pumped throughout our bodies, know that this means that it travels through 60,000 miles of a closed vascular system that connects all the parts of the body - all the vital organs and living tissues - to this incredible heart. — Hamza Yusuf

Waste equals food, whether it's food for the earth, or for a closed industrial cycle. We manufacture products that go from cradle to grave. We want to manufacture them from cradle to cradle. — William McDonough

She closed her eyes and wished that the earth would swallow her up. — Neil Gaiman

Sometimes I think I am a strange, strange creature -- something not of earth, nor yet of heaven, nor of hell. I think at times I am a little thing fallen on the earth by mistake: a thing thrown among foreign, unfitting elements, where every little door is closed -- every Why unanswered, and itself knows not where to lay its head. I feel a deadly certainty in some moments that the wild world contains not one moment of rest for me, that there will never be any rest, that my woman's-soul will go on asking long, long centuries after my woman's-body is laid in its grave. — Mary MacLane

You can have the rest of your life with her," St. Just said gently. "What if she won't have me?" Emmie asked softly. "What if she can't understand? She's six years old, St. Just. I've let her think she's had no mother for half her years on earth, and I was ready to turn my back on her completely." His fingers closed over hers, and this time he didn't simply pat her hand and let go. "You were trying to do the best you could in difficult circumstances. You wanted what was best for Winnie, and she will eventually understand that. It will work out. I know it will." "I can only hope so, and I can only continue to try my best." "Winnie — Grace Burrowes

Each word's evocative value or virtue, its individual power of touching springs in the mind and of initiating visions, becomes a treasure to revel in. Besides this hold on affection a word may well have about it the glamorous prestige of high adventures in great company. Think of that the plain word "dust" calls to mind. "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was." "Dust hath closed Helen's eye." "All follow this and come to dust." "The way to dusty death." So, to the lover of words, each word may be not a precious stone only, but one that has shone on Solomon's temple or in Cleopatra's hair. — C.E. Montague

There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate. — Charles Dickens

My kingdom for a camera," he said, his gray eyes crinkling in amusement. "You ought to see your face." I closed my gaping mouth and shook my head, amazed. "How on earth did you know I was there?" I asked him. Iain braced both fists in the small of his back and stretched. "I'm no clairvoyant," he assured me. "I saw you hopping the fence. Thought you were taking a devil of a time getting here. Besides," he added, pointing at the clear outline of our shadows on the shed wall, "if you've a mind to sneak up on a Scotsman, you'd best do it when the sun's not at your back. — Susanna Kearsley

We defend with our lives the petty principles which divide us. The common principle, which is the establishment of the empire of man on earth, we never lift a finger to defend. We are frightened of any urge which would lift us out of the muck. We fight only for the status quo, our particular status quo. We battle with heads down and eyes closed. — Henry Miller

If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before. — Mitchell Burgess

The path trodden by wayfarers and pilgrims followed the railway and then turned into the fields. Here Lara stopped, closed her eyes and took a good breath of the air which carried all the smells of the huge countryside. It was dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book. For a moment she rediscovered the meaning of her life. She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, then, out of love of life, to give birth to heirs who would do it in her place. — Boris Pasternak

He took in a premeditated breath, closed his eyes, and exhaled into the nye at his lips, playing a new tune.
It was not the sad music of waiting. Nor
was it a melody of his heritage. It was a call to the earth. To Allah. To
the country within him. — Susan Abulhawa

But there was always a shortfall, wasn't there? Between the match that the Holy One, blessed be He, envisioned and the reality of the situation under the chuppah. Between commandment and observance, heaven and earth, husband and wife, Zion and Jew. They called that shortfall 'the world.' Only when Messiah came would the breach be closed, all separations, distinctions, and distances collapsed. Until then, thanks be unto His Name, sparks, bright sparks, might leap across the gap, as between electric poles. And we must be grateful for their momentary light. — Michael Chabon

I am falling, tumbling through the air, but this time the darkness is alive around me, full of beating things, and I realize that I'm not surrounded by dark but have only had my eyes closed all this time. I open them, feeling silly, and at the same time a hundred thousand butterlies take off around me, so many of them in so many brilliant colors they are like a solid rainbow, temporarily obscuring the sun. But as they wing higher and higher they reveal a landscape below us, all green and gold and sun-drenched fields and pink-tinged clouds drifting underneath me, and the air around me is clear and blue and sweet smelling, and I'm laughing, laughing, laughing as I spin through the air because, of course, I haven't been falling all the time.
I've been flying. — Lauren Oliver

I visualized myself at Norma's house, stretched out on her couch, my eyes closed, and she at bthe paino playing a powerful movement from some Symphony in D major by Beethoven, by Brahms, by Sibelius, by Tschaikowsky, by anybody, by Thomas Wolfe, by Ernest Hemmingway, by William Saroyan, by Jack Kerouac, by George Apostolos, by Sebastian the Prince, by Love, by Earth, by Fire, by Water, by All, Everything, Love you and I, me myself, egotist, Earth, Fire, a mad and wild concoction of all Life, and of the all-embracing All. — Jack Kerouac

He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic movement of the earth and her watchers, trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other. — James Joyce

Her body was rounded like earth. Stories. Breath ... Her eyes have been painted closed. I understand. To tell a story you must travel inward. — Terry Tempest Williams

How it was. How it was that the earth could open up under you and swallow you whole, close above you as if you never were. Like Persephone snatched by the god. The ground opened up and out he came, sweeping her into the black chariot. Then down they plunged, under the ground, into the darkness, and the earth closed over her head, and she was gone, as if she had never been. — Janet Fitch

Every human being on the face of the earth has a steel plate in his head, but if you lie down now and then and get still as you can, it will slide open like elevator doors, letting in all the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently, pushing the button for a ride to the top. The real troubles in life happen when those hidden doors stay closed for too long. — Sue Monk Kidd

Grimaud left the chamber, and led the way to the hall, where, according
to the custom of the province, the body was laid out, previously to
being put away forever. D'Artagnan was struck at seeing two open coffins
in the hall. In reply to the mute invitation of Grimaud, he approached,
and saw in one of them Athos, still handsome in death, and, in the
other, Raoul with his eyes closed, his cheeks pearly as those of the
Palls of Virgil, with a smile on his violet lips. He shuddered at seeing
the father and son, those two departed souls, represented on earth by
two silent, melancholy bodies, incapable of touching each other, however
close they might be. — Alexandre Dumas

He saw then that there was a lens at one end, disguised as a dewdrop in the throat of an asphodel. Gently he took the egg in his hands, closed one eye, and looked. The light of the interior was not, as he had half expected, gold tinted, but brilliantly white, deriving from some concealed source. A world surely meant for Earth shone within, as though seen from below the orbit of the moon - indigo sea and emerald land. Rivers brown and clear as tea ran down long plains. His mother said, "Isn't it pretty?" Night hung at the corners in funereal purple, and sent long shadows like cold and lovely arms to caress the day; and while he watched and it fell, long-necked birds of so dark a pink that they were nearly red trailed stilt legs across the sky, their wings making crosses. — Gene Wolfe

I forced myself to let my belly relax into a deeper breath. I closed my eyes and felt the solidity of the pavement beneath my feet and the rock beneath that, felt the density of the earth hugging me to it, felt it spinning on its axis, felt it hurtling through space in its trip around the sun, felt th solar system whirling through space as part of our galaxy, felt the flight of galaxies escaping from the site of that primal explosion we call the big bang. Always in times of stress, if I contemplated the vastness of the universe, I did in some measure relax, comforted by the knowledge that I was but a small speck in creation after all, a mote in the enormity of God's eye, a fleeting arrangement of atoms that would in due time cycle back into the earth from which I had come and be reshuffled into something else, blended back into the grace of the natural world. In my very insignificance did I find my immortality. pp 113-114 — Sarah Andrews

The earth isn't spinning because you told it to do so. Your intestines aren't digesting by your command. You're made up of a trillion cells who don't ask your permission before offering their rakats. And we think submission is applying strict discipline to our worship? We think surrender is about not eating a pig? It's just not that small to me. i can't fit my deen into a neat little box, because to me everything comes from Allah. Birds sing Allah's name. to say Allah is in this book and not that ... do you know who you're talking about? the Allah that made you from a clot and clothed in flesh ... Allah is too big and open for my deen to be small and closed. — Michael Muhammad Knight

You are radiant."
"Yes, she is."
Daniel.
She turned to him. His blond hair and violet eyes, the strong cut of his shoulders, the full lips that had brought her back to life a thousand times. They had loved each other even longer than Luce had realized. Their love had been strong since the early days of Heaven. Their relationship spanned the entire story of existence. She knew where she'd first met Daniel on Earth-right here, on the singled fields of Troy while the angels were falling-but there was an earlier story. A different beginning to their love.
When? How had it happened?
She searched for the answer in his eyes-but she knew she wouldn't find it there. She had to look back in her own soul. She closed her eyes. — Lauren Kate