I had assumed that the earth, the spirit of the earth, noticed exceptions—those who wantonly damage it and those who do not. But the earth is wise. It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable.

About Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple. Over the span of her career,...

More quotations from Alice Walker

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

—Alice Walker

The animals of the planet are in desperate peril… Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.

—Alice Walker

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

—Alice Walker

It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of the world. For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile.

—Alice Walker

hope heroism tragedy shame heroes the world

To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps, to God; or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love, and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrows, is always a measure of what has gone before.

—Alice Walker

More quotations tagged with “earth”

Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth.

—Peter Benchley

life earth

Life comes from the earth and life returns to the earth.

—Zhuangzi

life earth return

Moses sees the bush as it actually is.… All that is living burns. This is the fundamental fact of nature. And Moses saw it with his own two eyes directly. That glimpse of the real world—of the world as it is known to God—is not a world of isolated things but of processes in concert. God tells Moses, "Take off your shoes, because the ground where you are standing is holy ground." He is asking Moses to experience in his own body what the burning bush experiences: a living connection between heaven and earth, the life that stretches out like taffy between our father the sun and our mother the earth. If you do not believe this, take off your shoes and stand in the grass or in the sand or in the dirt.

—William Bryant Logan

God experience nature earth heaven

The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.

—D. H. Lawrence

beauty nature earth manure

The earth is yet the place of the domicile of man and all the offspring of the first man.

—Joseph Franklin Rutherford

space home earth exploration

History

12 Apr 2015 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

I had assumed that the earth, the spirit of the earth, noticed exceptions — those who wantonly damage it and those who do not. But the earth is wise. It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable.