Terre Quotes

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Russia, Hermann Olberth in Germany, and Robert Goddard in the United States all came up with an eerily similar concept for using liquid fuel to power rockets for human spaceflight. I've seen this pointed out as an odd coincidence, one of those moments when an idea inexplicably emerges in multiple places at once. But when I read through each of these three men's biographies I discovered why they all had the same idea: all three of them were obsessed with Jules Verne's 1865 novel "De la terre a la lune (From the Earth to the Moon)." The novel details the strange adventures of three space explorers who travel to the moon together. What sets Verne's book apart from the other speculative fiction of the time was his careful attention to the physics involved in space travel -- his characters take pains to explain to each other exactly how and why each concept would work. All three real-life scientists -- the Russian, the German, and the American -- were following what they had learned from a French science fiction writer. ~ Margaret Lazarus Dean

Oh, bullshit. This isn't one of those stories, Avice. One moment of cack-handedness, Captain Cook offends the bloody locals, one slip of the tongue or misuse of sacred cutlery, and bang, he's on the grill. Do you ever think about how self-aggrandising that stuff is? Oh, all those stories pretending to be mea culpas about cultural insensitivity, oops, we said the wrong thing, but they're really all about how ridiculous natives overreact. Avice, we must have made thousands of fuckups like that over the years. Think about it. Just like our visitors did when they first met our lot, on Terre. And for the most part we didn't lose our shit, did we? ~ China Mieville

As Bill Bryson wrote during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney: 'A lot of people don't like fencing because they don't understand the rules and terminology, but in fact it's quite simple. There are basically four thrusts, known as the cartilage, the chaise lounge, the aubergine, and the fromage anglais, and these in turn can be parried by four defensive feints – the pastiche, the penchant, the demi-tass...e, and the saumon en croute. Scoring is one point for a petit pois and two for a baguette. Points can equally be deducted for a foot fault or pied a terre, or for a type of illegal lunge known as a zut alors. ~ Richard Cohen

[He] [w]ent deep into the cave where wounded men go when they walk around not talking to anyone about what's happening to them on the inside. Also known as Terre Haute. ~ Mohja Kahf

SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Une immense esprance a travers la terre', he read somewhere, and his comment was:'
and it's darned-well drowned everything worth having. ~ D.H. Lawrence

The stench of the manure that Jean was turning had cheered him up a little. He adored its promise of fertility and was sniffing it with the relish of a man smelling a randy woman. ~ Emile Zola

Seulement la terre qui obéit,
sait bien qu'elle tourne en rond,
tandis que nous vers l'infini
nous précipitons.

Translation:
But the obedient Earth well knows
that she moves round and round,
whereas we hurtle down
toward infinity. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild. (241) ~ Michael Pollan

I saw her, once.

"She passed through our village, through fields littered with dead soldiers after her forces overwhelmed the nation of Dumor. Her other Elites followed and then rows of white-robed Inquisitors, wielding the white-and-silver banners of the White Wolf. Where they went, the sky dimmed and the ground cracked - the clouds gathered behind the army as if a creature alive, black and churning in fury. As if the goddess of Death herself had come.

"She paused to look down at one of our dying soldiers. He trembled on the ground, but his eyes stayed on her. He spat something at her. She only stared back at him. I don't know what he saw in her expression, but his muscles tightened, his legs pushing against the dirt as he tried in vain to get away from her. Then the man started to scream. It is a sound I shall never forget as long as I live. She nodded to her Rainmaker, and he descended from his horse to plunge a sword through the dying soldier. Her face did not change at all. She simply rode on.

"I never saw her again. But even now, as an old man, I remember her as clearly as if she were standing before me. She was ice personified. There was once a time when darkness shrouded the world, and the darkness had a queen."

- A witness's account of Queen Adelina's siege on the nation of Dumor

The Village of Pon-de-Terre

28 Marzien, 1402 ~ Marie Lu

Greenery

Juniper, Oracle Oak and Hop Tree,
California Buckeye, and Elderberry.
Pacific Dogwood and the pale green Eucalyptus,
Quaking Aspen and Flannelbush.

raw, sprouting, lush
green love
green with envy
green with youth
green with early spring

olive, emerald, avocado,
greenlight
ready, set, GO!
greenhouse, greenbelts, ocean kelp,
cucumber, lizard, lime and forest green,
spruce, teal, and putting green.

green-eyed, verdant, grassy, immature
green and leafy
green half-formed
tender, pleasant, alluring
temperate
freshly sawed
vigorous
not ripe
yet
promising

greenbriar, greenbug, green dragon
greenshanks running along the ocean's edge
greenlings swimming
greenlets singing
greengage plums
green thumbs
greenhorns
and greenflies-
how on earth
amid sage swells
kelly hillsides
and swirls of firs
did I ever find
that green of
hers?

holly, drake, and brewster green,
pistachio, shamrock, serpentine
terre verde, Brunswick, tourmaline,
lotus, jade, and spinach green:
start to finish
lowlands to highs
no field, no forest, no leaf, no blade
can catch the light or trap the shade;
no earthly tones will ever rise
to match the green
enchantment
of her eyes. ~ Nancy Boutilier

It seemed to her as if her body were altogether too heavy for her; she had the feeling so well known to opium- smokers, which they call "clou'e 'a terre." It is as if the body clung desperately to the earth, by its own weight, and yet in the same way as a tired child nestles to its mother's breast. In this sensation there is a perfect lassitude mingled with a perfect longing. It may be that it is the counterpart of the freedom of the soul of which it is the herald and companion. ~ Aleister Crowley

And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play. ~ Emile Zola

Living under capitalism, I like learning to feel comfortable with activity that does not result in success - since non-success is the norm. Trying your best and making it is not the norm - it's propaganda. Of course I play with notions of hype, too ... The entire Comatonse website is a sarcastic hype-engine, sprawling forever, overwhelming the viewer with nothingness. ~ Terre Thaemlitz

The Olympics are too powerful. I hate sports - they generate so much nationalism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, economic exploitation, displacement of communities to build worthless bankrupt stadiums. ~ Terre Thaemlitz

The haute décor of the San Diego Homicide Division offices could have been lifted straight out of any insurance ajusters' pied-a-terre in Omaha. ~ Mark T. Sullivan

Within legal enforcement of "morality," there is no sense of how to morally, ethically, or fairly help people live safer lives. It's all about banishment or punishment or forced destitution - all of which creates more desperation, and more social risk-taking by people in moments of crisis. ~ Terre Thaemlitz

On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage.

(One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.) ~ Andre Gide

Hiking - I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them." ~ John Muir

Élodie, who was rising fifteen, lifted her anaemic, puffy, virginal face with its wispy hair; she was so thin-blooded that good country air seemed only to make her more sickly. ~ Emile Zola

I opened an office in Terre Haute, established eight of them, and became one of the eight county agents. ~ Orville Redenbacher

BEFORE THE HUMANS came we didn't speak so much of certain things. Before the humans came we didn't speak so much. Before the humans came we didn't speak." He glanced at me. "We didn't walk on our wings. We didn't walk. We didn't swallow earth. We didn't swallow." Scile was reading nervously, quickly. "'There's a Terre who swims with fishes, one who wore no clothes, one who ate what was given her, one who walks backwards. There's a rock that was broken and cemented together. I differ with myself then agree, like the rock that was broken and cemented together. I change my opinion. I'm like the rock that was broken and cemented together. I wasn't not like the rock that was broken and cemented together. "'I do what I always do, I'm like the Terre who swims with fishes. I'm not unlike that Terre. I'm very like it. 'I'm not water. I'm not water. I'm water. ~ China Mieville

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainte terre" - to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a sainte-terrer", a saunterer - a holy-lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit (1) in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the Infidels. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Well, I'm sure you know that our country is the only so-called advanced nation that still has a death penalty. And torture chambers. I mean, why screw around? But listen: If anyone here should wind up on a gurney in a lethal-injection facility, maybe the one at Terre Haute, here is what your last words should be: "This will certainly teach me a lesson." If Jesus were alive today, we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress. We would have to kill him for the same reason he was killed the first time. His ideas are just too liberal. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Laws never protect anyone, despite claiming to be all about protecting the public. Each legal restriction only strengthens the power of mafia and crime organising who step in to help people do what the law says they can't do, in every country. ~ Terre Thaemlitz