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Earth Art Quotes

119 art quotes about Earth | Submit more Earth art quotes

The earth is mankind's ultimate haven, our blessed terra firma. When it trembles and gives way beneath our feet, it's as though one of God's cheques has bounced. (Gilbert Adair)

The quality of place, the reaction to immediate contact with earth and growing things that have a fugal relationship with mountains and sky, is essential to the integrity of our existence on this planet. (Ansel Adams)

Everything costs and costs the earth. (Maya Angelou)

Humankind, despite its artistic pretensions, its sophistication, and its many accomplishments, owes its existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. (Anonymous)

I hope my paintings will always inspire people to become a part of nature rather than a force that manipulates and destroys it. I hope my work will be seen as an important voice in the environmental awakening of the last 50 years that is aiming to conserve and sustain our planet. (Clyde Aspevig)

Earth, receive an honoured guest: / William Yeats is laid to rest. / Let the Irish vessel lie / Emptied of its poetry. (W. H. Auden)

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat. (Marcus Aurelius)

The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens. (Baha'u'llah)

I can't conceive of anything being more varied and rich and handsome than the planet Earth. And its crowning beauty is the natural world. I want to soak it up, to understand it as well as I can, and to absorb it. And then I'd like to put it together and express it in my paintings. This is the way I want to dedicate my work. (Robert Bateman)

We are on the planet to... wrap our consciousness around the divine treasure within us... (Dr. Michael Beckwith)

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope. (Wendell Berry)

Touch the earth, feel the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. (Henry Beston)

The seas are the heart's blood of the earth. (Henry Beston)

O Earth O Earth return! / Arise from out the dewy grass /...Earth rais'd up her head, / From the darkness dread & drear / ...her locks cover'd with grey despair. (William Blake)

The earth's distances invite the eye. And as the eye reaches, so must the mind stretch to meet these new horizons. I challenge anyone to stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see a new expanse not only around him, but in him, too. (Hal Borland)

Earth took her shining station as a star, / In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds. (Christian Nestell Bovee)

This earth is our temple. We would be wise to honour and protect it. (Kristi Bridgeman)

Though earth and man were gone, / And suns and universes ceased to be, / And Thou were left alone, / Every existence would exist in Thee. (Emily Bronte)

Earth's crammed with heaven, / And every common bush afire with God; / But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - / The rest sit 'round it and pluck blackberries. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

-Abt Vogler...
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. (Robert Browning)

We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth; there is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beings that pass before us like shadows will stay in our presence forever. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)

-The Soft Machine, 1961
Just look there (another Heavy Metal Boy sank through the earth's crust and we got some good pictures...). (William S. Burroughs)

It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it - just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. (Albert Camus)

The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble. (Elias Canetti)

Look at the earth crowded with growth, new and old bursting from their strong roots hidden in the silent, live ground, each seed according to its own kind... each one knowing what to do, each one demanding its own rights on the earth... So, artist, you too from the deeps of your soul... let your roots creep forth, gaining strength. (Emily Carr)

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth. (Rachel Carson)

For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers. (Titus Lucretius Carus)

-b.1881 d.1955...
We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic temperature are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

This planet below you is our campsite, and you know of no other campground. (Kalpana Chawla)

We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapors, these are the daily weather of this world. (G. K. Chesterton)

Man's reaction to his earth expressed by means of a medium is ART. (Jack Clifton)

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning. (Aaron Copland)

-Roycrofter's Little Journeys, Eminent Artists, 1902...
The sun sinks more and more behind the horizon. Bam! he throws his last ray, a streak of gold and purple which fringes the flying clouds. There, now it has entirely disappeared. Bien! bien! twilight commences. (Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot)

We are the only life form on this planet capable of making 'ugly.' (Mary Ellen Crowley)

The surface of the Earth itself is an immense loom upon which the sun weaves the fabric of existence. (Wade Davis)

I have no country to fight for: my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world. (Eugene V. Debs)

-when asked where he came from...
I am a citizen of the world. (Diogenes of Sinope)

To give us room to explore the varieties of mind and body into which our genome can evolve, one planet is not enough. (Freeman Dyson)

Earth cannot escape heaven, flee it by going up, or flee it by going down; heaven still invades the earth, energizes it, makes it sacred. (Meister Johann Eckhart)

A few moments before the sun sets, the dark Earth shadow begins to rise in the east... It is nothing less than the shadow of the entire Earth, cast upward onto the atmosphere itself... I saw it over the great plains, and I felt as if I could sense the Earth pivoting silently under my feet... (James Elkins)

Earth laughs in flowers. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it. (Buckminster Fuller)

Asking and wondering, from where did this planet that we inhabit come? (Eduardo Galeano)

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not any man's greed. (Mahatma Gandhi)

Our planet will survive whether we as a species do or not. If we foul our nest to the point where it's uninhabitable then we're done for. (Marty Gibson)

Despite the folly of all our mistakes and all of our utopian conceits, and the lateness of the hour... The tide goes out. The tide comes in again. The world is not coming to an end. (Terry Glavin)

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit – this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

If there is a heaven, it must be here on earth because the earth is so beautiful. (Emile Gruppe)

When the wolf's wild song is heard no more, the earth will weep. (Hap Hagood)

I believe that each of us is called to the earth, by the earth itself, to offer the blessing of our personal transformation. I have heard so many people lament that their lives have been wasted, trying in vain to deal with all the pain. (Rue Anne Hass)

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit. (Stephen Hawking)

The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. (Ernest Hemingway)

Maybe this world is another planet's hell. (Aldous Huxley)

Go out, go out I beg of you. And taste the beauty of the wild. Behold the miracle of the earth. With all the wonder of a child. (Enda Jaques)

There it is. The Sunrise. The moment in the day when the earth seems to stop to celebrate this arrival of light... I stop what I'm doing and contemplate the magic and mystery of the world. (Melissa Jean)

It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is. (Robinson Jeffers)

Life on earth is a whole, yet it expresses itself in unique time-bound bodies, microscopic or visible, plant or animal, extinct or living. So there can be no one place to be. There can be no one way to be no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love... The particulars count. (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted. (Franz Kafka)

The Earth is the most powerful and energetic planet. (Abdul Kalam)

For plague and pestilence, plunder and pollution, the hazards of nature and the hunger of children are the foes of every nation. The earth, the sea and the air are the concern of every nation. (John F. Kennedy)

The air is like a butterfly / With frail blue wings / The happy earth looks at the sky / And sings. (Joyce Kilmer)

The world is blue. (Yves Klein)

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale. (Stanley Kubrick)

The creatures that inhabit this earth - be they human beings or animals - are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world. (Dalai Lama)

Because we all share this small planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. That is not just a dream, but a necessity. (Dalai Lama)

The act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth. (Frances Moore Lappe)

The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. (Aldo Leopold)

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. (John Lubbock)

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold - brothers who know now they are truly brothers. (Archibald MacLeish)

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. (Marya Mannes)

The world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty, the beauty of speed. (Filippo Marinetti)

-Life of Pi...
I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses. (Yann Martel)

I hold a vision of this blue green planet, safe and in balance. At the end of the Fossil Fuel Era, we are emerging to a new reality. We are ready to make the next leap - as momentous as abolishing slavery or giving women the vote. (Elizabeth May)

-Boy's Life
We plant our roots in trembling earth, we live where mountains rose and fell and prehistoric seas burned away in mist. We and the towns we have built are not permanent; the earth itself is a passing train... (Robert R. McGammon)

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew. (Marshall McLuhan)

My soul can find no staircase to heaven unless it be through earth's loveliness. (Michelangelo)

What if Earth be but the shadow of Heaven and things therein – each other like, more than on Earth is thought? (John Milton)

-Black Swan Green
The earth's a door, if you press your ear against it. (David Mitchell)

My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity. (Edgar Mitchell, astronaut)

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. (John Muir)

Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. (John Muir)

The earth is the Lord's fullness thereof: this is no longer a hollow dictum of religion, but a directive for economic action toward human brotherhood. (Lewis Mumford)

You can just drift unhappily towards this vision of heaven on earth, and ultimately that is what architecture is a vision of: Heaven on earth, at its best. (Ben Nicholson)

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. (Barack Obama)

The ability of human beings to be creative depends fundamentally on the health and well-being of our biosphere, the few kilometres of air, water, and soil that surround our planet like the skin of an apple. Quite simply, they are the physical and spiritual bases of our lives, and the only source of materials and tools... (Freeman Patterson)

Yet the wildlife of the world is disappearing, not because of a malicious and deliberate policy of slaughter and extermination, but simply because of a general and widespread ignorance and neglect. (Prince Philip)

We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. (Max de Pree)

We have not inherited the earth from our ancestors, we have only borrowed it from our children. (Ancient proverb)

Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. (Indian proverb)

There is no reason not to consider the world as one gigantic painting. (Robert Rauschenberg)

You are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

The ground submits to the sky and suffers whatever comes. Tell me, is the Earth worse for giving in like that? (Rumi)

If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be? (Carl Sagan)

The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper below him. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

-The Hidden Beauty of Pollination...
Beauty and seduction is nature's tool for survival, because we will protect what we fall in love with. Their relationship is a love story that feeds the Earth. (Louis Schwartzberg)

O Earth! all bathed with blood and years, yet never / Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers. (Madame de Stael)

The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant sees it. (Gertrude Stein)

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth! (Henry David Thoreau)

The earth is the general and equal possession of all humanity and therefore cannot be the property of individuals. (Leo Tolstoy)

Unlike the urban development that I see taking over and swallowing up our precious soil, when we interact with our environment in a way that allows for regeneration and natural spaces, the outcome can be beautiful. (Cory Trepanier)

When human beings lose their connection to nature, to heaven and earth, then they do not know how to nurture their environment or how to rule their world... healing our society goes hand in hand with healing our personal, elemental connection with the phenomenal world. (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche)

Instead of a handful of people manning a craft spinning in space, we all share the earth spinning in space and eventually... we are going to have to work together to overcome the environmental faux pas caused by six billion people living on this space ship. (Stewart Turcotte)

My love for you, sweet Earth, my mother, / I cannot hide - I do not crave / The phantom pleasures of that other, / That spectral world beyond the grave. (Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev)

Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun. (Author unknown)

You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it. (John Updike)

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die. (Gore Vidal)

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes. (Voltaire)

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap. (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

HELPED are those whose ever act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child. (Alice Walker)

-away from "the soul-destroying hurly-burly of life"...
The earth is young again. The peace, the harmony that pervades all, gives a Sabbath-like air to the day, to the environment. One feels that he is on holy ground, in Nature's temple. (William Wendt)

I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management. (E. B. White)

We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially. (E. B. White)

The earth remains jagged and broken to him or her who remains jagged and broken. (Walt Whitman)

One planet, one experiment. (Edward O. Wilson)

The world is the totality of facts, not of things. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Sometimes a painting is plea to the viewer to care - to care as deeply as the artist about the earth and its inhabitants. (Rachel Rubin Wolf)

The majesty of the earth gets my blood circulating – that's good stuff. (William Woodward)

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, / The earth and every common sight, / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light, /The glory and the freshness of a dream. (William Wordsworth)

A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet Earth taken from space. On the back it said, 'Wish you were here.' (Steven Wright)


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Editor: Robert Genn

Assistant Editor: Shawn Jackson

Associate Editors:

Scott Altman, Bonnie Austin, Karen Austin, Michele Becker, Joe Blodgett, Norman Brown, Alyce Bryson, Leanne Cadden, Penny Duane, Max Elliot, Derek Franklin, Sara Genn, Mardy Grothe, Harry Hartley, Sue Holland, Sue Legault, Tammy McManus, Eric Mewhinney, Bruce Miller, Laura Parrish, Andrea Pratt, Dan Roberts, Shirley Rochon, Gilbert Roy, John Sherlock, Victor Wong,
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Last modified: May 20, 2013