Carolina QuotesWho owns the earth? Did we want the earth that we should wander on it? Did we need the earth that we were never still upon it? Whoever needs the earth shall have the earth: he shall be still upon it, he shall rest within a little place, he shall dwell in one small room for ever.
Thomas Wolfe Carolinian
Source
Book 1. This excerpt is also cited in a short story "Forever and the Earth" (1950) by Ray Bradbury.
- work
- Of Time and the River (1935)
- year
- 1935
Cite this record
“Who owns the earth? Did we want the earth that we should wan…” Thomas Wolfe. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-5B3EB6EB5A. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/5b3eb6eb5a
More from Thomas Wolfe
America... It is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.
Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox in America--that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, this is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.
I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found. And this belief, which mounts now to the catharsis of knowledge and conviction, is for me — and I think for all of us — not only our own hope, but America's everlasting, living dream. I think the life which we have fashioned in America, and which has fashioned us — the forms we made, the cells that grew, the honeycomb that was created — was self-destructive in its nature, and must be destroyed. I think these forms are dying, and must die, just as I know that America and the people in it are deathless, undiscovered, and immortal, and must live.