A Quote by John Burnside

What is essential - the one thing that could stop us being coarsened to other lives - is that we feel a great, living wave of animal life all around us, covering the earth.

John Burnside

Quote Topics

Animal Animal Life Around Being Could Covering Earth Essential Feel Great Life Lives Living One Thing Other Stop The One Thing Thing Us Wave

Quote Author

John Burnside
Scottish - Writer
Born: March 19, 1955

A society that could heal the dismembered world would recognize the inherent value of each person and of the plant, animal and elemental life that makes up the earth's living body; it would offer real protection, encourage free expression, and reestablish an ecological balance to be biologically and economically sustainable. Its underlying metaphor would be mystery, the sense of wonder at all that is beyond us and around us, at the forces that sustain our lives and the intricate complexity and beauty of their dance.

Starhawk

As we live our human lives, let us be like the water. Let us be conscious of the flow. Let us not forget the great ground of being that draws us on through life. Let us live in a knowing hope, aware that all being is in transition, that all movement is back to the source. Let us treat those around us as reminders of our illusionary individuality. We know that they are us and we are them connected in ways we cannot fathom. Let us grow in compassion for all beings, for they share our journey.

Tom Barrett

A sense of being part of the great all-inclusive life prompts us to reflect on our own place and on how we ought to live. Guarding others' lives, the ecology and the earth is the same as protecting one's own life. By like token, wounding them is the same thing as wounding oneself. Consequently, it is the duty of each of us to participate as members of the life community in the evolution of the universe. We can do this by guarding earth's ecological system.

Daisaku Ikeda

Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness... We claim them from a higher source - from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives.

John Dickinson

For me, it always comes back to the land, respecting the land, the wildlife, the plants, the rivers, mountains, and deserts, the absolute essential bedrock of our lives. This is the source of where my power lies, the source of where all our power lies. We are animal. We are Earth. We are water. We are a community of human beings living on this planet together. And we forget that. We become disconnected, we lose our center point of gravity, that stillness that allows us to listen to life on a deeper level and to meet each other in a fully authentic and present way.

Terry Tempest Williams

Beauty draws us in. We can't stop looking or listening or touching. It takes us outside ourselves and it motivates us. It's essential to life and to happiness.

Nancy Etcoff

Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.

Jane Goodall

A sacred illness is one that educates us and alters us from the inside out, provides experiences and therefore knowledge that we could not possibly achieve in any other way, and aligns us with a life path that is, ultimately, of benefit to ourselves and those around us.

Deena Metzger

And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans--and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused--and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.

Sigrid Undset

We are animal. We are Earth. We are water. We are a community of human beings living on this planet together. And we forget that. We become disconnected, we lose our center point of gravity, that stillness that allows us to listen to life on a deeper level and to meet each other in a fully authentic and present way.

Terry Tempest Williams

Let us be good stewards of the Earth we inherited. All of us have to share the Earth's fragile ecosystems and precious resources, and each of us has a role to play in preserving them. If we are to go on living together on this earth, we must all be responsible for it.

Kofi Annan

Anyone who says that life matters less to an animal than it does to us has not held in his hands an animal fighting for its life. The whole of the being of the animal is thrown into that fight, without reserve. When you say that the fight lacks a dimension of intellectual or imaginative horror, I agree. It is not the mode of being animals to have an intellectual horror: their whole being is in the living flesh...I urge you to walk, flank to flank, beside the beast that is prodded down the chute to his executioner.

J. M. Coetzee

We are a feelingless people. If we could really feel, the pain would be so great that we would stop all the suffering. If we could feel that one person every six seconds dies of starvation ... we would stop it. ... If we could really feel it in the bowels, the groin, in the throat, in the breast, we would go into the streets and stop the war, stop slavery, stop the prisons, stop the killing, stop destruction.

Julian Beck

The most precious contribution we can make here on Earth is to create the lives we want to be living, communicating in all ways, to everyone around us, that success is really possible.

Susan Collins

When we are forced to stop the noise around us and in us, we begin to hear everything that is not us, and this is the beginning of humility and the renewal of our soul's energy; as only by listening to all that is larger than us can we discover and feel our place in the Universe.