Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth... Is that… — Lewis Thomas

Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth... Is that it is alive... Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, cleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos... It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.