Quotes & Sayings About Good Soil

Ahhhh ... organic and rich like good soil ... makes me want to listen and hear it grow.
the songs are honest and dimensional. it's music to my ears. — Amy Ray

become stable and some soil for the seed to grow. Make perfect pancakes If you are not good at making perfectly shaped pancakes, you can put the batter in a plastic ketchup bottle. From now on, your pancakes will be a lot more consistent and there will be less mess when cooking. — Sarah Brooks

Reap your harvest. (Benefits) You have been sowing seeds on good soil. (Working Hard) Your garden is overflowing abundantly.(Successful) Now is the time for you to fill your basket with the fruits of your labor. (Savings). Prepare your soil for new seeds. (Investments) — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery. — Wendell Berry

We are overcome by the "cares ... of this life" when we are paralyzed by fear of the future, which hinders our going forward in faith, trusting in God and His promises. It is up to each of us to set the priorities and to do the things that make our soil good and our harvest plentiful. — Dallin H. Oaks

Good God, with a bounty
Look down on Marion County,
For the soil is so pore, and so awful rooty, too,
I don't know what to God the pore folks gonna do. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The Jews who will it shall achieve their State. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die. The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. — Theodor Herzl

The only way to do good soil science is to put a splitter and a lumper together in the soil pit and let them fight it out until they achieve something that they both know must be correct because neither of them feels satisfied. Left to her own devices, the lumper will dig for three hours, mark the horizons in ten minutes, and then go on her merry way. Left to his own devices, the splitter will dig a hole and crawl inside, never to be seen again. Thus splitters and lumpers are both productive only when forced into bickering collaboration, and though together they produce great maps, they rarely return from field trips still on speaking terms. Once — Hope Jahren

All over the land are vast and handsome pastures, with good grass for cattle, and it strikes me the soil would be very fertile were the country inhabited and improved by reasonable people. — Alvar N. C. De Vaca

Some men good providers, got a way with the soil or a trade. Some men been given a singing voice take you to glory, or magic in they bodies to move in dance and make you feel alive. Some men so pretty you gaze on them with hunger, or so smooth they get hold of words and make you believe — Lalita Tademy

I find that a real gardener is not a man who cultivates flowers; he is a man who cultivates the soil. He is a creature who digs himself into the earth and leaves the sight of what is on it to us gaping good-for-nothings. He lives buried in the ground. He builds his monument in a heap of compost. If he came into the Garden of Eden, he would sniff excitedly and say: Good Lord, what humus! — Karel Capek

They need to get a good PR guy." "What's a PR guy?" "They're kind of like the old Greek sophists who played with words until you believed up was down. PR guys get paid to make people believe that a pile of shit is an investment in soil fertility. Professional liars." "Ah!" Manannan's expression lit with comprehension. "They are politicians?" "No, they're smarter and less pretty. They advise politicians. — Kevin Hearne

Finding that in [the Moon] there is a provision of light and heat; also in appearance, a soil proper for habitation fully as good as ours, if not perhaps better who can say that it is not extremely probable, nay beyond doubt, that there must be inhabitants on the Moon of some kind or other? — William Herschel

You want to do something good for the flowers? Then, keep the flowers in the soil, in nowhere else! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it. — Steven Erikson

Evil labours with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. — J.R.R. Tolkien

[My] pictures are about memory and forgetfulness. The evidence is dissolving. Bones crumble; human ash returns to soil; teeth, sandals, hair, bullets, axes disperse into atoms and molecules. Footprints in the snow will be erased by the next storm. The evidence of evil, like the evidence of good, obeys the universal laws of entropy. Heat cools, matter disintegrates, memories fade. If we let them. — Simon Norfolk

Good writing is always a breaking of the soil, clearing away prejudices, pulling up of sour weeds of crooked thinking, stripping the turf so as to get at what is fertile beneath. It would be amusing to carry the simile further. Those bulbs that flower in the sand and wither! The gay fiction annual that has to be planted again every year! Those experimental plants from Russia, France, and Greenwich Village that are always getting winter killed - confound 'em! - is it worth while planting them again? The stocky perennial that keeps coming up and coming up - so easy to grow and so ugly. Scarlet sage that gives a touch of fiery sin to the edge of the suburbanite's concrete walk! And then the good flowers - as honest as they are beautiful! The well-ordered gar den! The climbing rose that escapes and is the most beautiful of all! — Henry Seidel Canby

When the planes still swoop down and aerial spray a field in order to kill a predator insect with pesticides, we are in the Dark Ages of commerce. Maybe one thousandth of this aerial insecticide actually prevents the infestation. The balance goes to the leaves, into the soil, into the water, into all forms of wildlife, into ourselves. What is good for the balance sheet is wasteful of resources and harmful to life. — Paul Hawken

God (Nature, in my view) makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. He fores one soil to yield the products of another, one tree to bear another's fruit. He confuses and confounds time, place, and natural conditions. He mutilates his dog, his horse, and his slave. He destroys and defaces all things; he loves all that is deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it, not even himself, who must learn his paces like a saddle-horse, and be shaped to his master's taste like the trees in his garden. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without Nature, like a maimed one; practice without both, incomplete. As in agriculture a good soil is first sought for, then a skilful husbandman, and then good seed; in the same way nature corresponds to the soil, the teacher to the husbandman, precepts and instruction to the seed. — Plutarch

He was in that mostly empty-headed state of grace which is sometimes such fertile soil ; it's the ground from which our brightest dreams and biggest ideas (both good and spectacularly bad) suddenly burst forth, often full-blown. — Stephen King

Hopeless of the future, I wished but this- that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. — Charlotte Bronte

Their conversation was checked by the reappearance of Beatrix. "Spot's gone," she reported. "He seemed quite happy to take up residence at Stony Cross Park."
Seeming relieved by her sister's return, Amelia went to her, brushed at the crumbs of soil on her sleeve, and straightened her hair bow. "Good luck to Spot. Are you ready to go back in to supper, dear?"
"No."
"Oh, everything will be fine. Just remember to look chastened while I grimace in an authoritative manner, and I'm certain they'll allow us to stay through dessert. — Lisa Kleypas

When Spring unlocks the flowers To paint the laughing soil; When summer's balmy breezes Refresh the mower's toil; When winter holds in frosty chains The fallow and the flood; In God the earth rejoices still, And owns her Maker good. — Reginald Heber

Prayer is the superabundance of the heart. It is brim-full and running over with love and praise, as once it was with Mary, when the Word took root in her body. So too, our heart breaks out into a Magnificat. Now the Word has achieved its 'glorious course' (2 Thess. 3:1): it has gone out from God and been sown in the good soil of the heart. Having now been chewed over and assimilated, it is regenerated in the heart, to the praise of God. It has taken root in us and is now bearing its fruit: we in our turn utter the Word and send it back to God. We have become Word; we are prayer. — Andre Louf

To see rich land eaten away by erosion, to stand by as continual cultivation on sloping fields wears away the best soil, is enough to make a good farmer sick at heart. — Henry A. Wallace

People aren't so good at being good to one another. We try hard enough, but something essential was left out in the making of us, some hard little patch of stone in the fertile soil that's supposed to be our hearts. We get hung up on the bad, and we focus on it until it grows, and the whole crop is lost. I — Seanan McGuire

She allowed herself the luxury of a good cry, figuring that her tears were mingling with the downpour to soak into the soil. It was relief. It was joy. It was the knowledge that she had overcome, and it spilled out with her tears onto the ground that she had toiled with, to become a part of the crop she had planted with her own hands. It had sought to defeat her, and she had prevailed. Now, she was permanently a part of it. — Tracy Winegar

A Song of the good green grass! A song no more of the city streets; A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields. A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize. — Walt Whitman

A beginner must look on himself as one setting out to make a garden for his Lord's pleasure, on most unfruitful soil which abounds in weeds. His Majesty roots up the weeds and will put in good plants instead. Let us reckon that this is already done when the soul decides to practice prayer and has begun to do so. — Saint Teresa Of Avila

Is it reasonable to suppose that we can apply a broad-spectrum insecticide to kill the burrowing larval stages of a crop-destroying insect ... without also killing the 'good' insects whose function may be the essential one of breaking down organic matter and maintaining healthy soil? — Rachel Carson

A child develops best when, like a young plant, he is left undisturbed in the same soil. Too much travel, too much variety of impressions, are not good for the young, and cause them as they grow up to become incapable of enduring fruitful monotony. — Bertrand Russell

Accepting Christ" is only the beginning, not the ultimate goal. Likewise, evangelism is vital, but so is discipleship. To go no deeper is to risk being like the seed that fell not on good soil but on rocky ground, sprouting up but bearing little or no fruit. Focusing solely on God's gift of free salvation is focusing on the minimum. — Ann Spangler

The unholy alliance of science, technology, and industry has given birth to monstrous offspring that threaten the very future of the planet. From factory farming to the harvesting of human eggs, commodified science and technology comes with a utilitarian ethic. Life is cheap. Forests, animals, and people are raw materials. Everyone and everything is expendable.50 Whatever brings the greatest profit is worth the violence. God is calling the church in the night to retrieve the meaning of stewardship first and foremost as caring for the earth.51 Evangelism is not good news until it is good news for all of creation, for humanity, animals, plants, water, and soil, for the earth that God created and called good. — Elaine A. Heath

You must know how to translate the indications of the word into daily witness, allowing yourselves to be formed by the word which, like seed sown in good soil, brings abundant fruit. Thus you will remain docile to the Spirit and grow in union with God, you will cultivate fraternal communion among yourselves and be ready to serve your brethren generously, especially those most in need. — Pope Benedict XVI

Good oil, like good wine, is a gift from the gods. The grape and the olive are among the priceless benefactions of the soil, and were destined, each in its way, to promote the welfare of man. — George Ellwanger

I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend. [on an upcoming trip to Denmark] — George W. Bush

It were good to know how much hay an acre of every sort will bear; how many cattle the same weight of each sort of hay will feed and fatten; what quantity of grain and other commodities the same acre will bear in one, three or seven years; unto what use each soil is proper; all which particulars I call intrinsic value, for there is also another value merely accidental or extrinsic. — William Petty

I knew God wanted to do much more ... and he would, if we provided good soil in which he could work. — Jim Cymbala

Good will is a power that can be used every day of the year and every hour of the day. It is instantly available. By continuously practicing good will we cultivate a deep subconscious habit of good will. It becomes a pattern of our response in all situations. Good will works as silently as the sun and with as much power. It thaws the ice and snow of resistance and indifference. It warms and wins human hearts. It draws forth the best in others as flowers are drawn from the soil. It stimulates growth. — Wilferd Peterson

Nationality is a good thing to a certain extent, but universality is better. All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal. Their roots are in their native soil; but their branches wave in the unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language unto all men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable light that pervades all lands. Let us throw all the windows open; let us admit the light and air on all sides; that we may look towards the four corners of the heavens, and not always in the same direction. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Kingdom of God works into us like yeast, and it grows like a seed in good soil. It enters quietly, holistically, radically, joyfully subversive, right into the core of our humanity, unfurling, renewing, and giving work to our hands. It shows up when we live loved and where we love each other well. And the Kingdom of God lasts. — Sarah Bessey

Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well. — Shunryu Suzuki

If [the loss of fertility of the soil and the loss of soil as a renewable resource] does happen, we are familiar enough with the nature of American salesmanship to know that it will be done in the name of the starving millions, in the name of liberty, justice, democracy, and brotherhood, and to free the world from communism. We must, I think, be prepared to see, and to stand by, the truth: that the land should not be destroyed for any reason, not even for any apparently good reason. We must be prepared to say that enough food, year after year, is possible only for a limited number of peaople, and that this possibility can be preserved only by the steadfast, knowledgeable care of those people. — Wendell Berry

But this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination's struggles, far and nigh, All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence, and to show How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me, There is no depth to strike in — Dan Simmons

The highest point of Christian experience is to press forward. It is a distinguishing trait in the character of every good man that he grows in grace. Grace in the heart as certainly improves and advances, as a tree thrives in a kindly and well watered soil. — Gardiner Spring

What love and spirit give cannot be extorted. The state has always been made a hell by man's wanting to make it his heaven. The state is nothing but the coarse husk around the seed of life, the wall around the human fruits and flowers. Yet what good is a wall when the soil of our garden is parched? ... O inspiration, you will bring us the springtime of peoples again. The state cannot command your presence, but if it does not obstruct you, you will come. — Friedrich Holderlin

A good start in life is as important to plants as it is to children: they must develop strong roots in a congenial soil, otherwise they will never make the growth that will serve them richly according to their needs in their adult life. — Vita Sackville-West

Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments, but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature; nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original; she used to repeat sounding phrases from books; she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment, but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her — Charlotte Bronte

And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself - more birds than women flocking round his body! — Homer

There do remain dispersed in the soil of human nature divers seeds of goodness, of benignity, of ingenuity, which, being cherished, excited, and quickened by good culture, do, by common experience, thrust out flowers very lovely, and yield fruits very pleasant of virtue and goodness. — Isaac Barrow

The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in. — James Russell Lowell

As Americans we place special emphasis on human dignity, justice and freedom. WE measure as good of bad that which meets these goals. Those high ideas have survived and flourished on this soil for two centuries since the Founding Fathers planted them because we have sustained a general public enlightenment through a free and universal public school system. — Henry Clausen

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours with our words is that our good will gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. — George Eliot

It was easy to believe when everything was good. But when bad things happened, doubt sowed its seed in fertile soil and burrowed deep. It was my duty to root it out. — Michele Dominguez Greene

The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. — Henry David Thoreau

Good neighborhoods, rich with water, thick soil, and - most important - full sunlight, give rise to trees that reach their maximum potential. In contrast, trees in bad neighborhoods never achieve half of that height, never have much of a teenage growth spurt, but focus instead on just holding on, growing at less than half the rate of the more fortunate. During — Hope Jahren

For the Flower to blossom, you need the right soil as well as the right seed. The same is true to cultivate good thinking. — William Bernbach

So let's not get frightened when the children read fantasy. It's the compost for a healthy mind. It stimulate s the inquisitive nodes, and there is some evidence that a rich internal fantasy life is as good and necessary for a child as healthy soil is for a plant, for much the same reasons. — Terry Pratchett

WHEN GOD CREATED ROBOT SOULS HAVE NO SOIL WHEN FIRST CHISELED. SO,HOW,IT IS FELT AS COMMITTED &CONVICTED BAD OR GOOD DEEDS OF CREATURES.TO DRAFT CYCLIC BIRTHS FATE.IS IT NOT DIVINE WILL & PLEASURE SELF DECISION.????????? — Various

I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him - my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper. — Henry David Thoreau

In those days Cheboygan was already something of a resort town, although Milo didn't realize this fact until he was older. For most of his childhood, he knew only the deep woods that ran behind their property - 350 acres of sugar maple, beech, and evergreen that had managed to remain unlogged during the huge timber harvests that had denuded much of the rest of the state. He spent a good part of his days inside this forest. The soil there was padded with a layer of decaying leaves and needles whose scents mingled to form a cool spice in his nose. He didn't notice the smell when he was in it so much as feel its absence when he wasn't. School, home, any building he had to spend time in - they all left him with the feeling that something had been cleaned away. — Ethan Canin

Idleness, simon-pure, from which all manner of good springs like seed from a fallow soil, is sure to be misnamed and misconstrued ... — Louise Imogen Guiney

In this belief system Nazism had replaced hallmarks of Christianity with the qualities of a good Nazi: strength rather than weakness; domination rather than humility; hatred rather than love; dependence on Hitler rather than dependence on Christ, not to mention the importance of blood, race, and soil rather than the sacraments, and a sense of eternity. — Dean G. Stroud

How much courage does it take to fire up your tractor and plow under a crop you spent six or seven years growing? How much courage to go on and do that after you've spent all that time finding out how to prepare the soil and when to plant and how much to water and when to reap? How much to just say, I have to quit these peas. Peas are no good for me, I better try corn or beans. — Stephen King

That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. (2) That a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work. (3) That a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living. — Mahatma Gandhi

August 21.
... I've become pretty good at telling weeds fom not-weeds. But every once in a while I have my doubts. I come across an especially difficult root. I pull and it doesn't come out. I pull again. It resists. I dig my gloved fingers into the soil and grab it with both hands and pull yet again. It begins to come out, but I can see it's going to take several more hard pulls. And that's when the doubts begin. I begin to wonder: Have I made a mistake? Is this really a weed? If it's not supposed to be here, why is it resisting so? But it's too late now. There's nothing to do with a plant half pulled but to go all the way. And so I tug some more, and finally, shedding clods of dirt and worms, it breaks free of the earth---and I try not to hear the tiny, anguished cry. — Jerry Spinelli

I think a stalwart peasant in sheep-skin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half dozen children, is good quality — Clifford Sifton

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

The inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their "soil," but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on. — Henry David Thoreau

A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it. We must not be governed by rigid rules, as by the almanac, but let the season rule us. The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's. Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. Where the good husbandman is, there is the good soil. Take any other course, and life will be a succession of regrets. Let us see vessels sailing prosperously before the wind, and not simply stranded barks. There is no world for the penitent and regretful. — Henry David Thoreau

He made a pit and digged it. He was cunning in his plans and industrious in his labors. He stooped to the dirty work of digging. He did not fear to soil his own hands. He was willing to work in a ditch if others might fall therein. What mean things men will do to wreak revenge on the godly. They hunt for good men as if they were brute beasts - they that will not give them the fair chase afforded to the hare or the fox, but must secretly entrap them because they can neither run them down nor shoot them down. Our enemies will not meet us to the face for they fear us as much as they pretend to despise us. But let us look on to the end of the scene. The verse says he has fallen into the ditch that he has made. Ah, there he is. Let us laugh at his disappointment. Lo, he is himself the beast. He has hunted his own soul. The chase has brought him a goodly victim. So should it ever be. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If the soil were as good as the harbors, it would be a blessing. — Jacques Cartier

The computer models are very good at solving equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly. — Freeman Dyson

Affirmations are like seed planted in soil. Poor soil, poor growth. Rich soil, abundant growth. The more you choose to think thoughts that make you feel good, the quicker the affirmations work. — Louise Hay

To be angry is very good. It burns out things and leaves nutrients in the soil. You should always be ready to be angry at injustice and cruelty. — Maya Angelou

Wherever you have a plot of land, however small, plant a garden. Staying close to the soil is good for the soul. — Spencer W. Kimball

Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge. — Jonathan Haidt

As a good gardener prepares the soil, so a wise leader creates an environment that promotes community ... community involves a common place, a common time, and a common purpose. Just getting people in the same place at the same time does not produce a team. Community requires a common vision. — Diane Dreher

The community of Partageuse had drifted together like so much dust in a breeze, settling in this spot where two oceans met, because there was fresh water and a natural harbor and good soil. Its port was no rival to Albany, but convenient for locals shipping timber or sandalwood or beef. Little businesses had sprung up and clung on like lichen on a rock face, and the town had accumulated a school, a variety of churches with different hymns and architectures, a good few brick and stone houses and a lot more built of weatherboard and tin. It gradually produced various shops, a town hall, even a Dalgety's stock and station agency. And pubs. Many pubs. — M.L. Stedman

Slow me down, Lord. Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me, amid the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in my memory. Teach me the art of taking minute vacations - of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to smile at a child, to read a few lines from a good book. Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life's enduring values, that I may grow toward my greater destiny. Remind me each day that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed. Let me look upward to the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well. — Chip Ingram

After a few days of rain, the seedlings will push through the soil and unfold their tiny leaves. Two weeks later, if the rain is still good, we then carefully apply the first round of fertilizer, because each seedling requires love and attention like any living thing if it's going to grow up strong. — William Kamkwamba

You know what they say. Good men stink of soil, oil, and other toil; villains smell of roses. — Anonymous

I didn't want you to remember this day because of the scarf. So I thought instead you could remember it as the day your Granny broke into a zoo - " "And escaped from a hospital," Elsa says with a grin. "And escaped from a hospital," says Granny with a grin. "And threw turds at the police." "Actually, it was soil! Or mainly soil, anyway." "Changing memories is a good superpower, I suppose." Granny shrugs. "If you can't get rid of the bad, you have to top it up with more goody stuff. — Fredrik Backman

That human life depends upon resources, good soil, and governments with just procedures. — Noah Cicero

Every good thing in the Christian life grows in the soil of humility. Without humility, every virtue and every grace withers. That's why Calvin said humility is first, second, and third in the Christian faith. — John Piper

If I ever have kids, this is what I'm going to do with them: I am going to give birth to them on foreign soil - preferably the soil of someplace like Oostende or Antwerp - destinations that have the allure of being obscure, freezing, and impossibly cultured. These are places in which people are casually trilingual and everyone knows how to make good coffee and gourmet dinners at home without having to shop for specific ingredients. Everyone has hip European sneakers that effortlessly look like the exact pair you've been searching for your whole life. Everything is sweetened with honey and even the generic-brand Q-tips are aesthetically packaged. People die from old age or crimes of passion or because they fall off glaciers. All the woman are either thin, thin and happy, fat and happy, or thin and miserable in a glamorous way. Somehow none of their Italian heels get caught in the fifteenth-century cobblestone. Ever. — Sloane Crosley

Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me. Don't you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? You not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams ... and I buried them inside you. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me no eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom. — August Wilson

there were two types of people in this world: those who belong to the soil and the good, rich earth, planting their seeds to blossom, and those who belong to the road and the endless horizons, carrying their home on their shoulders wherever they go. — Marieke Nijkamp

It was a good death. A very good death. She closed her eyes, and an hour later she gasped twice and let out one long exhale, as if her body were sighing in relief as her soul flew free of its corporeal cage. And it was strange ... Nalla woke up at that moment and the young focused not on her granhmen, but above the bed. Her little chubby hands reached high, and she smiled and cooed as if someone had just stroked her cheek.
Rehv stared down at the body. His mother had always believed she would be reborn unto the Fade, the roots of her faith planted in the rich soil of her Chosen upbringing. He hoped that was true. He wanted to believe she lived on somewhere.
It was the only thing that eased the pain in his chest even slightly. — J.R. Ward

So they really put in a bid on the piece of property we've been salivating over for the last four years?" Airiana asked. "Well, Lexi's been salivating over. I presume they plan on joining the two properties."
"That's the plan," Lexi said. She couldn't hide her smile and this time she didn't try. "The soil is really good. There's a very large section of forest that is just awesome as well. I've been talking to Thomas about possibly getting a few llamas. The manure is excellent for plants."
Airiana groaned. "It's too early in the morning to be talking about manure, Lexi, especially in such an enthusiastic tone."

-Airiana & Lexi — Christine Feehan

I read in one of the gardening books that manure was very good for soil, so I had a shitload delivered. — Kaaron Warren

Literature, in fact, had been concerned with virtues and vices of a perfectly healthy sort, the regular functioning of brains of a normal conformation, the practical reality of current ideas, with never a thought for morbid depravities and other-worldly aspirations; in short, the discoveries of these anaylists of human nature stopped short at the speculations good or bad, classified by the church; their efforts amounted to no more than the humdrum researches of a botanist who watches closely the expected development of ordinary flora planted in common or garden soil. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

I elect to stay on the soil of which I was born and on the plot of ground which I have fairly bought and honestly paid for. Don't advise me to leave, and don't add insult to injury by telling me it's for my own good; of that I am to be the judge. — Robert Purvis

Jesus' intention in this parable was to compare the only good soil to the ones that were not legitimate alternatives. To Him, there was one option for a true believer. — Francis Chan

If we weren't so dirt-conscious, we would obtain adequate vitamin B12 from soil, air, water, and bacteria, but we meticulously wash and peel our vegetables now - and with good reason, as we can't be sure our soil is not contaminated with pesticides and herbicides. — Sharon Gannon

Still, he never felt that the sermons he wrote at the cottage were good. By the time he got back to Washington to preach them, they no longer excited him. They seemed cold, lifeless. This was probably because Peter's best sermons rose out of the soil of emotion in his own heart. That emotion had to be a present, valid reality. He could not conjure it up. — Catherine Marshall

The gentleness of the English civilisation is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the moment you set foot on English soil. It is a land where bus conductors are good-tempered and policemen carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to shove people off the pavement. — George Orwell

To me, the lasting impression of any good wine is the thought of its maker. Those whose efforts transformed the fruits of the soil into a finished work of art. Those who pulled from the hectic passage of time an ordered memory. They are immortalized by their wine in my glass. — Dave Chambers