Earth  

"Before the ocean and the earth appeared— before the skies had overspread them all— the face of Nature in a vast expanse was naught but Chaos uniformly waste. It was a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight; and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap." --Metamorphoses by Ovid

"OUR earth is but as an atom in space, a star amongst stars. Yet, to us who inhabit it, it is still without bounds, as it was in the time of our barbarian ancestors. Nor can we foresee the period when the whole of its surface will be known to us. We have been taught by astronomers and geodesists that our planet is a sphere flattened at the poles, and physical geographers and meteorologists have applied their powers of inductive reasoning to establish theories on the direction of the winds and ocean currents within the polar regions. But hitherto no explorer has succeeded in reaching the extremities of our earth, and no one can tell whether land or sea extends beyond those icy barriers which have frustrated our most determined efforts. Thanks to the struggles of indomitable seamen, the pride of our race, the area of the mysterious regions around the north pole has been reduced to something like the hundredth part of the earth’s surface, but in the south there still remains an unknown region of such vast extent, that the moon, were she to drop upon our planet, might disappear within it without coming into contact with any part of the earth’s surface already known to us."--The Earth and Its Inhabitants (1875–1894) by Élisée Reclus