Earth Touch Of Earth Quotes & Sayings

Touch the earth, speak of love, walk on common ground. — Steven Van Zandt

As we move forward into this 21st century, we encourage all of you to take a positive step toward universal understanding. Touch people with the message of love. Pray for the peace and happiness of people in all other lands and cultures. Make a commitment to world peace by honoring the earth, honoring its people, and celebrating the unity of the human spirit. — Masami Saionji

One of the strangest things in life is the false ideas everywhere prevalent regarding the nature of happiness. The general belief seems to be that it is founded on things that can be bought with money. The more money the more things, and the more things the more enjoyment, the greater the degree of happiness. But money has never yet been known to buy happiness. No one has ever yet found happiness by chasing it over the earth. It is not in our food, it is not in our drink, it is not in our clothes or material possessions; it is not in excitement or a constant round of pleasure. Happiness is born of right living. It is the child of right thinking, and right acting, of helpful service. A selfish life never knows real happiness. Greed and envy never touch it. — Orison Swett Marden

An ardent desire to go took possession of me once more. Not because I wanted to leave - I was quite all right on this Cretan coast, and felt happy and free there and I needed nothing - but because I have always been consumed with one desire; to touch and see as much as possible of the earth and the sea before I die. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills, - with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance, - the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiment, - that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies. — Rabindranath Tagore

In their dreams they touch, they intertwine, it's more like a collision, and that is the end of flying. They fall to earth, fouled parachutists, botched and cindery angels, love streaming out behind them like torn silk. Enemy groundfire comes up to meet them. — Margaret Atwood

Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it.
You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself
to get lost.
Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know.
To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry. — Lauren Oliver

Separate from the other unnamed billions who walk the earth, each of these little groups of three or five or twelve, brought together by the shuffle of chance, then welded by blood, sees in itself the whole of earth, or all that matters of it. What happens to one of the three or five or twelve will happen to them all. Whatever grief or triumph may touch any one will touch every one, as they are carried forward into the unknowable under the brilliant, terrifying sun which nourishes all. — Belva Plain

Seems to me the most beautiful thing on earth, perhaps because it is unearthly, and the touch of God in us: the miracle of mercy, the unexpected, the arms of the prodigal son's father, the ravens bringing food in the night, the cup running over. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The mountains hugged each other sternly, similar to the way men hugged other men, not letting their chests touch. Thin clouds hung around their necks, and the mountains farthest away, the ones passed out against the horizon, were so pale, you couldn't see where their backs ended and the sky began.
The view made me sad, but I suppose everyone, when happening upon a sprawling expanse of earth, all light and mist, all breathlessness and infinity, felt sad - "the enduring gloom of man," Dad called it. — Marisha Pessl

Ah, the dear earth! The beautiful earth! She wants all that we have--the touch of our hands, the song of our hearts.
She wants to draw out from us all that is within, hidden even from ourselves.
This is her sorrow, that she finds out some things only to know that she has not found all. She loses before she attains.
Ah, the dear earth! We shall never deceive you.

(They sing.)
I shall crown you with my garland, before I take leave.
You ever spoke to me in all my joys and sorrows.
And now, at the end of the day, my own heart will break in speech.
Words came to me, but not the tune, and the song that I never sang to you remains hidden behind my tears. — Rabindranath Tagore

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures. — Stewart Udall

Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth. — Ptolemy

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. — Madeline Miller

The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts ... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher - in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician. — John Maynard Keynes

Sometimes when I talk to little children I remind them of the fact that when I was growing up myself, I used to play with frog eggs and tadpoles and I used to walk in the field, I used to literally copy whatever my mother was doing on the land. And that may be the reason why I eventually developed the passion for green and for the Earth. So it is extremely important for adults and especially those who are in charge of cities to make sure that we do not lose touch with the land and with the environment. And especially our children. — Wangari Maathai

Religions have much, much more in common than they like to admit. The beliefs are almost always the same; it's just that the histories are different. Everybody wants to believe in a higher power. Everybody wants to belong to something bigger than themselves, and everybody wants company in doing that. They want there to be a force of good on earth, and they want an incentive to be a part of that force. They want to be able to prove their belief and their belonging, through rituals and devotion. They want to touch the enormity. — David Levithan

The Gentle Gardener
I'd like to leave but daffodils to mark my little way,
To leave but tulips red and white behind me as I stray;
I'd like to pass away from earth and feel I'd left behind
But roses and forget-me-nots for all who come to find.
I'd like to sow the barren spots with all the flowers of earth,
To leave a path where those who come should find but gentle mirth;
And when at last I'm called upon to join the heavenly throng
I'd like to feel along my way I'd left no sign of wrong.
And yet the cares are many and the hours of toil are few;
There is not time enough on earth for all I'd like to do;
But, having lived and having toiled, I'd like the world to find
Some little touch of beauty that my soul had left behind. — Edgar A. Guest

I Am Primate

I was once taught, that I am a soul in a body.
I once believed I was separate from the earth.
A stranger in a strange land,
a sinner in need of a Savior.
But, isn't this my home? This beautiful world?
Isn't this my form?
These hands, these eyes, this touch?
Am I to believe I have violated a rule,
just by being born?
Who claims this right to judge,
and on what authority do you stand?
The truth screams out from my cells.
I am not the imagination of a God,
I am a voice in the earth,
I am that which you deny!
The earth is my home and the stars my destiny.
I will touch the planets through
the hands of my children
. . . not the will of your ghost!
I am a voice in the evolutionary continuum
and I claim the right to be alive,
without your story.
For I Am Human, I Am Proud,
and I AM . . . PRIMATE! — Christopher Zzenn Loren

I know the woman has no soul, I know The woman has no possibilities Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so. It is her flesh that I adore; I go Thirsting afresh to drain her empty kiss. I know she cannot love: it is not this My vanquished heart implores in overthrow. Tyrannously I crave, I crave alone, Her splendid body, Earth's most eloquent Music, divinest human harmony; Her body now a silent instrument, That 'neath my touch shall wake and make for me The strains I have but dreamed of, never known. — Arthur Symons

Reality is a state of mind. To the banker, the money in his ledger book is all very real, though he doesn't actually see it or touch it. But to the Brahma, it simply doesn't exist the way the air and the earth, pain and loss do. To him, the banker's reality is folly. To the banker, the Brahma's ideas are as inconsequential as dust. — Libba Bray

One could make a compelling argument that we know more about the universe than the marine biologist knows about the bottom of the ocean or the geologist knows about the center of Earth. Far from an existence as powerless stargazers, modern astrophysicists are armed to the teeth with the tools and techniques of spectroscopy, enabling us all to stay firmly planted on Earth, yet finally touch the stars (without burning our fingers) and claim to know them as never before. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I placed some of the DNA on the ends of my fingers and rubbed them together. The stuff was sticky. It began to dissolve on my skin. 'It's melting
like cotton candy.'
'Sure. That's the sugar in the DNA,' Smith said.
'Would it taste sweet?'
'No. DNA is an acid, and it's got salts in it. Actually, I've never tasted it.'
Later, I got some dried calf DNA. I placed a bit of the fluff on my tongue. It melted into a gluey ooze that stuck to the roof of my mouth in a blob. The blob felt slippery on my tongue, and the taste of pure DNA appeared. It had a soft taste, unsweet, rather bland, with a touch of acid and a hint of salt. Perhaps like the earth's primordial sea. It faded away.
Page 67, in Richard Preston's biographical essay on Craig Venter, "The Genome Warrior" (originally published in The New Yorker in 2000). — Timothy Ferris

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

- Anne Hathaway — Carol Ann Duffy

Is there any finer phrase in the English language than Midsummer Day? There are no words to touch it for conjuring. It is the beginning of blooming roses and ripening corn, of days that stretch on, reaching for midnight until the spangled blue velvet of night descends and beginning again before cockcrow, when the dew jewels the grass like diamonds scattered while the earth slumbers. I, of course, expected rain. Not just rain, but torrential, heaving, biblical rain - the sort to set arks afloat. Everything else had gone awry, why not that? But when I awoke on Midsummer Day, the sun greeted me cordially, coaxing the dew from the grass and the early roses as a light breeze wafted the scent of charred chimney over the gardens. I stood at the window and breathed in deeply all the scents of summer, fresh grass and carp ponds and blossoming herb knots until the whole of it mingled in my head and made me dizzy. A bee floated lazily in the window and out again as if beckoning me to follow. — Deanna Raybourn

If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Like the bottom of a lake, the trees trapped a cold reminder that the sun struggles to touch all parts of the earth equally. — Elliot Ackerman

Anna took her solace where she always did. The smell of the earth, the touch of the sky held for her a special alchemy, able to turn loneliness into aloneness, and so make it, if not sacred, at least bearable. — Nevada Barr

We are told of the time when, with the same beliefs, with the same institutions, all the world seemed happy: why complain of these beliefs; why banish these institutions? We are slow to admit that that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the principle of evil which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and gods, the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm themselves, and slay and exterminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by the vast depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of the combatants. So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its ancestors, and to change the laws framed by the founders of communities, and confirmed by the faithful observance of the ages. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Son, you won't need to talk to my headstone in order to talk to me. I won't be there. I'll be in the air and the Earth. I'll be in the stars that light the African heavens. I'll be watchin' over you and your family. My spirit will always be close enough to touch and protect you all. So, do not grieve for me. My body will die, but my soul will live on. For my soul cannot die. Always remember that my soul is the spark of God in me. — Randall Robinson

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

Dawn will come,' I told him quietly. 'The night can be very dark; but I'll stay by you until the sun rises. These shadows cannot touch you while I am here. Soon we'll see the first hint of grey in the sky, the color of a pigeon's coat, then the smallest touch of the sun's finger, and one bird will be bold enough to wake first and sing of tall trees and open skies and freedom. Then all will brighten and color will wash across the earth and it will be a new day. I will stay with you, until then. — Juliet Marillier

The gift and the presence of the Holy Spirit is the greatest and most wonderful thing which we can experience - we ourselves, the human community, all living things and this earth. For with the Holy Spirit it is not just one random spirit that is present, among all the many good and evil spirits that there are. It is God himself, the creative and life-giving, redeeming and saving God. Where the Holy Spirit is present, God is present in a special way, and we experience God through our lives, which become wholly living from within. We experience whole, full, healed and redeemed life, experience it with all our senses. We feel and taste, we touch and see our life in God and God in our life. — Jurgen Moltmann

Water and air He for the Tenor chose,
Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose,
To th' active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,
To Saturn's string a touch more sore and grave.
The motions strait, and round, and swift, and slow,
And short and long, were mixt and woven so,
Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall,
As made this decent measur'd dance of all.
And this is Musick. — Abraham Cowley

We were equipped by our Creator not only to live on this earth, but also to live in touch with heaven. This was the Great Design of the Great Designer. — Billy Graham

Please drop a note to the clerk of the weather, and have a good, rousing snow-storm
say on the twenty-second. None of your meek, gentle, nonsensical, shilly-shallying snow-storms; not the sort where the flakes float lazily down from the sky as if they didn't care whether they ever got here or not, and then melt away as soon as they touch the earth, but a regular business-like whizzing, whirring, blurring, cutting snow-storm, warranted to freeze and stay on! — Kate Douglas Wiggin

But I will stretch my toes so that they touch the rail at the end of the bed; I will assure myself, touching the rail, of something hard. Now I cannot sink; cannot altogether fall through the thin sheet now. Now I spread my body on this frail mattress and hang suspended. I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. All is soft, and bending. Walls and cupboards whiten and bend their yellow squares on top of which a pale glass gleams. Out of me now my mind can pour. — Virginia Woolf

aphorism 129:

I would have every thought stoop and touch the Earth but that I already know the impossibility of the effort. A thought seems to have a life of its own and would rather leave itself open to flattering interpretations. — Matt Berry

I like to walk, touch living Mother Earth - bare feet best, and thrill every step. Used to envy happy reptiles that had advantage of so much body in contact with earth, bosom to bosom. [We] live with our heels as well as head and most of our pleasure comes in that way. — John Muir

With education symmetrical and true we will take the dead mass buried by slavery's hand and touch them to life. This beauteous angel, which has always done its work for those on earth, will roll away the stone from the tomb where is buried a race, and my people will come forth to their glory and the amazement of the world. — William Tecumseh Vernon

I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia — Ptolemy

No one can sing well, play well, or write well, without living through moments of the deepest pain and anguish. Every real talent has known times of torturing depression when the heart in its agony has cried out to God: "Why hast Thou forsaken me? What have I done that I should suffer so?" And then, at the very darkest moment, suddenly, the veil is torn from their eyes! Truth, with her flaming torch, stands before them, and they understand that God sends them suffering to strengthen and ennoble their talent, that it may touch men's hearts and show to tired wanderers on earth glimpses of heaven. — Aimee Dostoyevsky

To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence. Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth; they stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and shields. If you would know the earth for what it really is, learn it through its sacred places. At Devil's Tower or Canyon de Chelly or the Cahokia Mounds, you touch the pulse of the living planet; you feel its breath upon you. You become one with a spirit that pervades geologic time and space. — N. Scott Momaday

As you listen to the murmur of the rain, remember that it is the touch of God. And that just as it unites heaven and earth and nourishes all living things, it can also reunite your worldly spirit with your heart, nourishing the love that you thought you'd lost. — Wayne Lincourt

So with the stretch of the white road before me,
Shining snow crystals rainbowed by the sun,
Fields that are white, stained with long, cool, blue shadows,
Strong with the strength of my horse as we run.
Joy in the touch of the wind and the sunlight!
Joy! With the vigorous earth I am one. — Amy Lowell

And then an endless instant later Arthur was kissing him back, like this was perfectly normal, like this was exactly what Arthur had been hoping for most in all the world, his large hands closing over Merlin's shoulders and sliding down over his back, strong and warm even through the fabric of his sweater, one hand pausing on his waist and the other sliding around to cup his arse and pull him in closer. Merlin made a surprised, enthusiastic sound and stopped holding back; let himself cling to Arthur and kiss him more fiercely; and then they were kissing like it was their last day on earth and they had to cram every possible moment of passion into this tiny slice of time, hands clutching at fabric, mouths pressing hungry bites onto bare skin as if they would somehow devour one another, trying to touch and taste everything at once, frantic and needy and bursting with urgent desire and the inescapable knowledge that this was finite, was stolen, was not supposed to be. — FayJay

May with its light behaving
Stirs vessel, eye and limb,
The singular and sad
Are willing to recover,
And to each swan-delighting river
The careless picnics come
In living white and red.

Our dead, remote and hooded,
In hollows rest, but we
From their vague woods have broken,
Forests where children meet
And the white angel-vampires flit,
Stand now with shaded eye,
The dangerous apple taken.

The real world lies before us,
Brave motions of the young,
Abundant wish for death,
The pleasing, pleasured, haunted:
A dying Master sinks tormented
In his admirers' ring,
The unjust walk the earth.

And love that makes impatient
Tortoise and roe, that lays
The blonde beside the dark,
Urges upon our blood,
Before the evil and the good
How insufficient is
Touch, endearment, look. — W. H. Auden

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. — Steve Jobs

The writers I most enjoy reading, even in gritty, down-to-earth genres, have a touch of the poet in them; they can create original, evocative images and make words do things they hadn't known they could. Writing my first novel left me feeling that the most important quality for a writer is empathy, the ability to see the world through the eyes of someone from a vastly different background. Especially, to create engaging villains, you have to see how the world makes sense from their point of view, even if it's the polar opposite of yours. For me, a good villain is one who makes the reader ask, "If I had the same experience as this person, can I be absolutely sure I wouldn't have done the same things? — Charles Kowalski

There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for Clare. To her sublime trustfulness he was all that goodness could be - knew all that a guide, philosopher, and friend should know. She thought every line in the contour of his person the perfection of masculine beauty, his soul the soul of a saint, his intellect that of a seer. The wisdom of her love for him, as love, sustained her dignity; she seemed to be wearing a crown. The compassion of his love for her, as she saw it, made her lift up her heart to him in devotion. He would sometimes catch her large, worshipful eyes, that had no bottom to them looking at him from their depths, as if she saw something immortal before her. — Thomas Hardy

We've lost touch and allowed technology to take precedence over organic nature. But let's not forget that those microchips in our computers came from elements of the earth. — Emilio Estevez

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth. — Henry David Thoreau

Unfamiliar insects produced a soft but insistent chirp; a crisp whir like the sound the earth itself might make rolling through the darkness if we all kept quiet enough to hear it. The lights of the condominium complex shone. They were not far away. Still, they looked almost too real and close to touch. They were like holes punched in the night, leaking light from another, more animated world. For a moment I could imagine what it would be like to be a ghost - to walk forever through a silence deeper than silence, to apprehend but never quite reach the lights of home. — Michael Cunningham

Simplicity means to choose ways of living that touch the Earth more lightly and that reduce our ecological footprint. — Duane Elgin

In silence, our senses come alive...
We see the beauty around us more clearly, learn to listen to the language of silence, touch and smell the earth so pure and taste the sweetness of the air we breathe. — Margo Vader

They will tremble with awe because of all the good and all the peace I will bring about for them. Jeremiah 33:9 God does not minimize the things that break our hearts. He is not looking down on us, thinking how petty we are because things have hurt us. If we are so "heavenly minded" that we grow out of touch with earthly hardships, we've missed an important priority of Christ. God left our bare feet on the hot pavement of earth so we could grow through our hurts, not ignore and refuse to feel our way through them. So surrender your hurt to Him, withholding nothing, and invite Him to work miracles from your misery. Be patient and get to know Him through the process of healing. — Beth Moore

I will win you away from every earth, from every sky,
For the woods are my place of birth, and the place to die,
For while standing on earth I touch it with but one foot,
For I'll sing your worth as nobody could or would. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Love Beyond God

What if every time you woke
Your sigh was felt
By every being on Earth?

What if every time you spoke
Your words were heard
By every ear on Earth?

What if when you told a joke
You tickled the senses
Of every smile on Earth?

What if with each tender stroke
You shared your touch
With every hand on Earth?

What if when your heart broke
You tasted the tears
Running down every cheek on Earth?

No bond or brand or "guilted" yoke,
Surely this is love that reaches beyond,
That holds one to another
And every other to one.
No matter the color
Or where we're from.
This is now.
This is we.
This is Love.
This is God.
And this is love beyond God. — Adam Lawrence Dyer

Before you leave this earth make sure you reach out and touch one's soul with your spirit in kindness. Make a profound difference in humanity. — Timothy Pina

Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way. — Diane Ackerman

Danny had never been so aware for anyone else in his life. Everything shrank from a universe to a pinpoint, every turn of the earth dependent on his next breath, each touch lingering until those eyes found his.
Colton pressed a hand to Danny's chest and laid his mouth gently against his. Danny wasn't prepared for it - the reminder that Colton was not like him, that his palms were smooth and free of flaws, that his wrist showed no veins, that his mouth tasted of copper and of sweet clean air.
He was a boy of air and dust and sunlight. Everything that had gone into the making of the world. — Tara Sim

She wanted Adam Fox with the fervour of
parched earth thirsting for water, corn aching for the warmth of ripening sun, a starving skeleton drooling over a crust of bread. Her passionate young body yearned to feel his touch, soft lips quivered an invitation to be kissed, wounded eyes promised a lifetime of devotion, if only ... — Margaret Rome

Anne Hathaway
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed. — Carol Ann Duffy

Flying Is that what it's like when you die? Do you slip out of your skin, go soaring up into a butterscotch sky? Do you surf waves of light? How far? How high? I hope that's what it's like, but I'm afraid it's a lot more like falling with no net to catch you, and no way of knowing how hard you will hit or where you'll stop. Will you touch down back on Earth, or will you land in the nightmare you always feared you'd never wake up from? — Ellen Hopkins

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The last fling of winter is over ... The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it. It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell. — Donald C. Peattie

If you establish a relationship with it then you have relationship with mankind. You are responsible then for that tree and for the trees of the world. But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity, with human beings. We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we never really touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the sound that is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, not the breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, the sound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots. You must be extraordinarily sensitive to hear the sound. This sound is not the noise of the world, not the noise of the chattering of the mind, not the vulgarity of human quarrels and human warfare but sound as part of the universe. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odors, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes
In grains as countless as the seaside sands,
The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth
Happy who walks with him! — William Cowper

I get to keep you," he said, staring at me with an
intensity that made me shiver.
"Keep me?" I asked, reaching up to kiss his chin and trail
kisses down his perfect neck.
"Not here. I can't take much more, Pagan. I'm only so
strong," he said in a husky voice as he pulled me against his
chest. "You're mine now. While you walk the Earth you
belong to me. Nothing can hurt you." I heard a touch of
humor in his voice. "It's pretty impossible to hurt what Death
protects. — Abbi Glines

The last spectacle of which Christian men are likely to grow tired is a harbour. Centuries hence there may be jumping-off places for the stars, and our children's children's and so forth children may regard a ship as a creeping thing scarcely more adventurous than a worm. Meanwhile, every harbour gives us a sense of being in touch, if not with the ends of the universe, with the ends of the earth. — Robert Wilson Lynd

She had missed him for a while, missed his warm smile and tender yet expert touch. But she had also welcomed the absence of the invisible leash which had tugged her back to Earth more often than she liked, which had whispered of duties to another and required explanations and justifications for every excursion. And eventually even the good memories had faded into the background, replaced by the thrill of new endeavors. — G.S. Jennsen

If they [Mexicans] touch the hair of the head of one of our citizens, tell him [Commodore Dallas] to batter down and destroy their town and exterminate the inhabitants from the face of the earth! — Andrew Jackson

Ode to Douglas Adams

In the solar system we inhabit, we live on a small planet we all call Earth. Okay, when I say small, I mean it's small compared to say, oh, Jupiter. Earth is something like a dime compared to Jupiter's beach ball. On this Earth is a fairly large country we all call The United States of America. Of course, when I say fairly large, it's like the U.S. is a piece of broccoli next to China's really large cauliflower. Now that I think of it, that may not be a good comparison as it depends on the restaurant you go to. At the place I was at last night it would be a good comparison as the cauliflower was larger than the broccoli. Not that I'd touch either. I had a hamburger with fries and somebody at the next table had those ghastly vegetables.

From the Preface to "Sex and the American Male." I was saddened by the passing of Douglas Adams and wrote the preface to sound a little like his "Hitchhiker's..." books and to honor him. I hope he's smiling. — Jay Williams

Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature. — Andy Goldsworthy

Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul. They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance, of the briefness of our span on this earth. They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal. — Elizabeth Aston

Generally there is in man a divinity which strives to push him onward and upward. We believe that this power within him is the spirit that comes from God. Man lived before he came to this earth, and he is here now to strive to perfect the spirit within. At sometime in his life, every man is conscious of a desire to come in touch with the Infinite. His spirit reaches out for God. This sense of feeling is universal, and all men ought to be, in deepest truth, engaged in the same great work - the search for and the development of spiritual peace and freedom. — David O. McKay

Lips, breath, tongue, hands, and every other inch of his body worships mine like I'm his religion and this bed is our church. And I swear his love is God sent and his touch is a glimpse of Heaven here on Earth. — Jewel E. Ann

Every Princess has one Prince to share the loves and joys of life, and do you know how that Princess knows which Prince is hers?"
"How Mommy?"
"From the kiss."
"But how?"
"The very first kiss with your Prince will change your life. When your lips touch for the first time, the earth will feel like it stops moving, but in the same moment, the world around you spins. It'll feel like fireworks in the night sky. Like a bright light in the darkness. You'll feel your heart beat fast in your ears but silence will surround you. And when you pull apart and open your eyes and look at each other, and really see each other. You'll know it in that moment, through that kiss, that you've just let someone own a piece of your heart, and you'll live happily ever after. — Jay McLean

That's what I want, a mental evidence I can feel. I don't want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in. I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there's no way to do that. In order to believe in a thing you've got to carry it with you. You can't carry the Earth, or a man, in your pocket. I want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so I can believe in them. How clumsy to have to go to all the trouble of going out and bringing in something terribly physical to prove something. I hate physical things because they can be left behind and become impossible to believe in them. — Ray Bradbury

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. — Richard Bach

We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells. — Norman Mailer

Now consider this: the first person to hold the newborn Christ was Mary of Nazareth, and the first person to touch the newly risen Christ, however briefly, was Mary of Magdala. God placed himself in a woman's care when he came to earth, then entrusted a woman to announce his resurrection when he came back to life. — Liz Curtis Higgs

The abode of God, too, is wherever is earth and sea and air, and sky and virtue. Why further do we seek the Gods of heaven? Whatever thou dost behold and whatever thou dost touch, that is Jupiter. — Lucan

Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech - and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives - he called them enemies! - hidden out of sight somewhere. — Joseph Conrad

Other creatures receive food simply as fodder. But we take the raw materials of the earth and work with them - touch them, manipulate them, taste them, glory in their heady smells and colors, and then, through a bit of alchemy, transform them into delicious creations. — Judith Jones

Nothing had changed. Their lives had been expended in the cheerless labor, their wills broken, their intelligences numbed. Now they were in the earth to which they had given their lives; and slowly, year by year, the earth would take them. Slowly the damp and rot woudl infest the pine boxes which held their bodies, and slowly it would touch their flesh and finally it would consume the last vestiges of their substances. And they would become a meaningless part of that stubborn earth to which they had long ago given themselves. — John Edward Williams

Maybe the idea of the world as flat isn't a tribal memory or an archetypal memory, but something far older
a fox memory, a worm memory, a moss memory.
Memory of leaping or crawling or shrugging rootlet by rootlet forward, across the flatness of everything.
To perceive of the earth as round needed something else
standing up!
that hadn't yet happened.
What a wild family! Fox and giraffe and wart hog, of course. But these also: bodies like tiny strings, bodies like blades and blossoms! Cord grass, Christmas fern, soldier moss! And here comes grasshopper, all toes and knees and eyes, over the little mountains of the dust.
When I see the black cricket in the woodpile, in autumn, I don't frighten her. And when I see the moss grazing upon the rock, I touch her tenderly,
sweet cousin. — Mary Oliver

She was silent; the great wings almost stopped moving; only a delicate stirring seemed to keep them aloft. "Listen, then," Mrs. Whatsit said. The resonant voice rose and the words seemed to be all around them so that Meg felt that she could almost reach out and touch them:
"Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that there is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift their voice; let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord! — Madeleine L'Engle

How old are you?'
The question startled him. 'Earth and Air. There are times you are no more comfortable a companion than I am. The answer to that serves no conceivable purpose, and I refuse to give it to you.'
When I was a kid I read Black Beauty. There were horse-drawn cabs in that. Are you that old?'
Older, older, older. I shall not tell you, so you may as well leave off, my primrose.'
She snorted. 'I think that means I should give up. You've started sweet-talking.'
I am torn,' the phouka said, grinning, 'between responding, 'Oh, absolutely!' and 'What do you mean, started?' He grabbed her hand, dropped a kiss on the knuckles, and loped across the street. Eddi felt the touch of his mouth on her hand for an inexplicably long time. — Emma Bull

Though spiritual truth is inscrutable, still we all benefit from it through the embodiment of form. Just as you see the changes brought by the stars, moon and sun turning in the sky, the rain from clouds in due season, summer and winter, and all the transformations of time. You see all these things happen, and know that it is right and in accordance with wisdom. But how does that distant cloud know it is necessary to rain at its appointed time? Or how does this earth, when it receives a seed, know to return it tenfold? Well, Someone does this. Behold that Someone through the embodiment of this world, and find nourishment. Just as you use the body of another person to contact their essence, use the embodiment of this world to touch That reality. — Rumi

I wanted to ask you about your vision of perfection in an imperfect world, or what side of the earth calls out to you when you touch a physical globe, or maybe about your greatest heartache and how you still go on as your world continues turning, or what you do with a memory once lodged inside your bones that;s still breathing, and burning. But you're still a stranger, and I'm overly polite, so I'll ask all about your day when I'd rather know about your life. — Victoria Erickson

A garden is the place millions of people go to touch the earth, to smell flowers - to use some of that fabled human brain power in the cause of better participating with natural processes in the place they call home. It serves as an art project, an organic produce market, a spiritual practice, a pharmacy. It offers ongoing lessons in ecology, biology, chemistry, geology, meteorology. Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time. It bestows on its practitioners a genuine sense of admiration for the plants, the soil, the sun, the water. — Jim Nollman

Hello,' he said, his voice and smile pleasant.
'You can't touch me!' I sat up and pulled the covers over myself.
'Yes about that. You need to negate the command.'
'Excuse me?'
He looked at me patiently, like he was explaining something to a stubborn child. 'You need to break that command.'
'And why on earth would I ever want to do that?' I glared at him. Lunatic.
'Because I wasn't finished.'
'Oh, no, I really think that you were.' I held up my wrist. It still bore the scarlet mark of his hand and, to my eyes at least, was bright against the light of the lamp. Then, since I was holding up my hand anyway, I flipped him off.
'You're going to need more.'
'Well, that's easy.' I held up my other hand and flipped him off with that one, too. — Kiersten White

In the 70s, GEORGE CLINTON and PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC and EARTH WIND & FIRE, we were very serious about our music and who we were trying to touch. I think that's why the music of the 70s has not died - because it has a rejuvenating quality to it. — Maurice White

Death cannot touch the higher consciousness of man ... it can only separate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated from those who have passed onwards, but ... there is no such thing as Death at all. — Annie Besant

And so, it comes to pass in time, that the earth ceases for us to be a weltering chaos. We walk in the great hall of life, looking up and round reverentially. Nothing is despicable - all is meaningful; nothing is small - all is part of a whole, whose beginning and end we know not. The life that throbs in us is a pulsation from it; too mighty for our comprehension, no too small.
And so, it comes to pass at last, that whereas the sky was at first a small blue rag stretched out over us and so low that our hands might touch it, pressing down on us, it raises itself into an immeasurable blue arch over our heads, and we begin to live again. — Olive Schreiner

He decided to go over a couple of blocks to Michael's Tavern for something cold, and as he walked beside the road he felt his anger burning up in the heat of noon, and saw himself, as he often did when he was outdoors on hot days, being forged in enormous fires for some purpose beyond his imagining. He was only walking down a street toward a barroom, and yet in his own mind he took his part in the eternity of this place. It seemed to him - it was not the first time - that he belonged in Hell, and would always find himself joyful in its midst. It seemed to him that to touch James Houston was to touch one iota of the vast grit that made the desert and hid the fires at the centre of the earth. — Denis Johnson

The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew into the air came to rest upon the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. — Luther Standing Bear

Animals are on earth to protect mankind. When you gather a bunch of them together like this, you create a safe haven. Nothing can touch you here. — Jonathan Carroll

Much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossible on earth to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies. Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky