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When you learn to take
responsibility for yourselves, then you will
start taking responsibility for the planet. The planet is being
destroyed
by your abandonment of responsibility. You assume that you own the
planet. And ownership confers upon you the right to do as you like.
You do not own this beautiful planet. You are simply a guest here.
-Leonard Jacobson
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May
our walking on earth be gentle as the union of the butterfly and the
flower. -traditional
Buddhist blessing
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If the Earth
does grow inhospitable
toward human presence, it is primarily
because we have lost our sense of
courtesy toward the Earth and its
inhabitants, our sense of gratitude,
our willingness to recognize the
sacred character of habitat, our
capacity for the awesome, for
the numinous quality of
every earthly reality. -Thomas Berry
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It
is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again
to the earth and in contemplation of her beauties
to know the sense of wonder and humility.
-Rachel
Carson
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Planet
earth is my home, and I am committed to its care. In gratitude,
I acknowledge the gift I’ve been given and accept my responsibility
to care for it. The earth and all its bounty are divinely created
and
sustained. Deeply grateful for both bounty and balance, I realize
that
planet earth is a gift from God for all people of the world—in
the past, now, and for generations to come.
-unattributed
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When we heal the earth, we heal
ourselves. -David Orr |
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We are living beyond our
means. As a people we have developed
a lifestyle that is draining
the earth of its priceless and
irreplaceable resources without regard
for the future
of our children and people all around the world.
-Margaret Mead |
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Who is our neighbor: the Samaritan?
the outcast? the enemy? Yes, yes,
of course. But it is also the whale, the dolphin, and the rain
forest. Our neighbor
is the entire community of life, the entire universe. We must love
it all as ourselves. -Brian Patrick |
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Leafing
idly through The Home Planet, I stop at a picture
of Earth floating against the black velvet of space. Africa and Europe are visible under swirling white clouds,
but the predominant color is blue. This was the one
picture from the Apollo missions that told the whole
story--how small the planet is in the vast sprawl
of space, how fragile its environments are. Seen from space, Earth has no national borders,
no military zones, no visible fences. Quite the
opposite. You can see how storm systems swirling
above a continent may well affect the grain yield
half a world away. The entire atmosphere of the
planet--all the air we breathe, all the sky we
fly through, even the ozone layer--is visible as
the thinnest rind. The picture eloquently
reminds one that Earth is a single organism.
-Diane
Ackerman
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The people
who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow
concept of human liberation, and begin to see liberation as something
that needs to be extended to the whole of the natural world. What
is
needed is the liberation of all things that support life--the air, the
waters,
the trees--all the things which support the sacred web of life.
-Haudenosaunee
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Being born as
humans to this earth is a very sacred trust. We have a
sacred responsibility because of the special gift we have, which is
beyond
the fine gifts of the plant life, the fish, the woodlands, the birds,
and all the other living things on earth. We are able to take care
of them. -Audrey Shenandoah |
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How
far must suffering and misery go before we see that even
in the day of vast cities and powerful machines, the good earth is
our mother and that if we destroy her, we destroy ourselves?
-Paul
Bigelow Sears |
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To
cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster
its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.
-Wendell
Berry
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Our
earth is but a small star in a great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet
unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided
by senseless distinctions of race, color or theory.
-Stephen
Vincent Benet |
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One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in
this life,
and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine,
the
celestial, the pure in the common, the near at hand--to see that heaven lies
about us here in this world. -John Burroughs |
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There
is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother;
she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her
children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.
-Bourke Coekran |
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People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin
air,
but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle
which
we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds,
green leaves, the
black, curious eyes of a child--our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
-Thich Nhat Hanh
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You must bind up any wounds you
give
the earth and you
must feed her to
replace what you take from her. Every
gift
she gives, every tree, every stalk
of grain, costs her. Only if
you repay
your debts will she continue to provide.
-Morgan Llywelyn
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The
planet earth has a life span of eight billion years, give or take a few
million. People have been around for approximately forty thousand years--a
virtual
blink in the cosmos. It is sad that we as a species are ravaging
the natural
world so fast that we are jeopardizing our survival. If we wipe
ourselves out,
it would be the height of folly, but the earth will survive even
us. It will eventually
restore itself. It might take a few thousand years, and it won't
be just
as it was before, but its life is stronger than death.
-Charlotte
Davis Kasl
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My soul can find no staircase
to Heaven
unless
it be
through Earth's loveliness. -Michelangelo
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We do
not inherit the earth from our ancestors;
we borrow it from our children. -Native
American Proverb
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Earth teach me stillness
as the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
as the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation
as the ant which crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
as dry fields weep with rain.
Ute prayer |
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This we know. The Earth
does not belong to people; people belong to the Earth. This
we know. All things are connected like blood which unites
one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls
the Earth befalls the sons and daughters of the Earth.
People did not weave the web of life; we are merely strands in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
-attributed to Chief Seattle |
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The grand show
is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never
all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever
rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea
and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth
rolls. -John Muir |
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"Only
if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one relieve
one's sadness," don Juan said. "Warriors are
always joyful because their love is unalterable and their beloved,
the earth, embraces them and bestows upon them inconceivable
gifts. The sadness belongs only to those who hate the very
thing that gives shelter to their beings." Don Juan
again caressed the ground with tenderness.
"This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and
understands every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains,
and finally when I had fully understood my love for it, it taught
me freedom." -Carlos Castaneda |
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The earth has
enough for every person's need, but not for every person's greed.
-Mohandas
Gandhi |
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I do not
believe that our relationship to the earth is liable to change for
the better until it gets catastrophically worse. Our record
indicates that we can walk with our eyes wide open straight into
sheer destruction if there is a profit on the way--and that seems
to me to be what we are doing now. I have no great
expectation that human cussedness will somehow be quickly modified
and turned into generosity or that humanity's care of the earth
will improve much. But I do go around planting trees on the
campus. -Joseph A. Sittler, Grace
Notes and Other Fragments |
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The
longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder
of the world. . . I have loved the feel of the grass under my
feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side. The
hum of the wind in the treetops has always been good music to me,
and the face of the fields has often comforted me more than the
faces of men.
I am in love with this world. . . I have tilled its soil, I
have gathered its harvest, I have waited upon its seasons, and
always have I reaped what I have sown.
I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed
its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting if its frosts, the
oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its
winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and
comings. -John Burroughs |
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