Quotes about the world

page 11

“We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.”

“Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.”

“Seeing the world with all the unspoiled simplicity of a young child, you are free from concepts of beauty and ugliness, good and evil, and no longer fall prey to conflicting tendencies driven by desire or repulsion. Why trouble yourself about all the ups and downs of daily life, like a child who delights in building a sand castle but cries when it collapses? To get what they want and be rid of what they dislike, look how people throw themselves into torments, like moths plunging into the flame of a lamp! Would it not be better to put down your heavy burden of dreamlike obsessions once and for all?”

“Nothing determines me from outside, not because nothing acts upon me, but, on the contrary, because I am from the start outside myself and open to the world.”

“In a world that has REALLY been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.”

“My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.”

“The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”

“Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.”

“There is no doubt that the princess did become a queen---not only on the screen. One of the most loved, one of the most skillful, one of the most intelligent, one of the most sensitive, charming actresses---and friends, in my life---but also in the later stages of her life, the UNICEF ambassador to the children of the world. The generosity, sensitivity, the nobility of her service to the children of the world and the mothers of the world will never be forgotten.”

“Think… of the world you carry within you.”

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible….”

“It was one thing to snuggle a little when the world seemed about to end, and quite another to explain to her parents that she wanted to date an ancient magical horse.”

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”

“I cannot contribute anything to this world because I only have one method: agony.”

“There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary numerals, and those who don't.”

“When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs whatever I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create?”

“Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”

“The world's a puzzle; no need to make sense out of it." - Socrates”

“I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”

“People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

“Everything can be forgiven in this world, save telling the truth.”

“Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.”

“… in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.”

“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.”

“From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world.”

“You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia.”

“I am accused. I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies. I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing. And now the
world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.”

“The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion… open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.”

“I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense…”

“The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

“Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.”

“In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living.”

“Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.”

“It's a cash and carry world. Sometimes you pay a little. Mostly it's a lot. Sometimes, it's everything you have.”

“You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world…”

“When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life.”

“To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”

“At last she shut the book sharply, lay back, and drew a deep breath, expressive of the wonder which always marks the transition from the imaginary world to the real world.”

“Everything in the world was in precarious balance, pure risk, and those who didn’t agree to take the risk wasted away in a corner, without getting to know life.”

“By space the universe encompasses me and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.”

“The significant relationships of early adulthood are thus construed as the means to an end of individual achievement, and these "transitional figures" must be cast off or reconstructed following the realization of success. If in the process, however, they become, like Dido, an impediment to the fulfillment of the Dream, then the relationship must be renounced, "to allow the developmental process" to continue. This process is defined by Levinson explicitly as one of individuation: "throughout the life cycle, but especially in the key transition periods… the developmental process of individuation is going on." The process refers "to the changes in a person's relationships to himself and to the external world," the relationships that constitute his "Life Structure" (p. 195).

If in the course of "Becoming One's Own Man," this structure is discovered to be flawed and threatens the great expectations of the Dream, then in order to avert "serious Failure or Decline," the man must "break out" to salvage his Dream. This act of breaking out is consummated by a "marker event" of separation, such as "leaving his wife, quitting his job, or moving to another region" (p. 206). Thus the road to mid-life salvation runs through either achievement or separation.”

“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.”

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

“The more real you get the more unreal the world gets.”

“It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules.”

“I just found this world a hard place to be good in,’ says Bunny, then he closes his eyes and, with an expiration of breath, goes still.”

“Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.”

“In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.”

“It is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

“Don't go around thinking the world owes you a living. It was here first.”

“How I wish I didn't know anything about myself and this world!”

“The boy reached through to the Soul of the World, and saw that it was part of the Soul of God. And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles.”

“God gives us life, but the world's landlord is the devil….”

“The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.”

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

“The world's very small when you don't have anywhere to go.”

“You, darkness, of whom I am born- I love you more than the flame that limits the world to the circle it illumines and excludes the rest.”

“It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world.”

“Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self created suffering comes to an end.”

“… of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.”

“We don’t do what we do for the glory or the fame or the credit; we do it for the quiet satisfaction of making the world a better place, saving the lives of innocents, and being better than you are.”

“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so.”

“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.”

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, the women together ought to be able to turn back and get it right side up again! and now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”

“What dark secrets do you keep hidden from the world? Where would you go if no one could find you? What would you do if no one could see you?”

“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. (Technically a misquote, but I like the misquote better)”

“The world, we'd discovered, doesn't love you like your family loves you.”

“During our recent Human Rights Defenders Forum at The Carter Center, it was reported that between two hundred and three hundred children are sold in Atlanta alone each month! Our city is considered to be one of the preeminent human trafficking centers in the United States, perhaps because we have the busiest airport in the world and because, until recently, the penalty for someone convicted of selling another human being was only a $50 fine. A much heavier penalty of up to twenty years’ imprisonment can be imposed by the federal government, but only if there is proof that the trafficking took place across state lines. An analysis by Atlanta social workers found that 42 percent of the sexual exchanges they investigated were in brothels and hotel rooms in the most affluent areas of the city, while only 9 percent were in the poorer neighborhoods in the vicinity of the airport. Like Kara, they too conclude that the primary culprits are the men who buy sexual favors and the male pimps and brothel owners who control the women and garner most of the financial gains.”

“I awoke, only to find that the rest of the world is still asleep.”

“The world must be peopled!”

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.”

“How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in it!”

“I'm like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.”

“Float with me in the world of ether.”

“The world’s most sensible person and the biggest idiot both stay within you. The worst part is you can’t even tell who is who.”

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood?”

“In my schoolboy reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams.”

“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”

“Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent, leave the house before you find something worth staying in for.”

“If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.”

“I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.”

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”

“How silent lies the world
Within fair twilight furled,
Bringing such sweet relief!
A quiet room resembling,
Where, without fear or trembling,
You sleep away day's grief.”

“He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief.”

“The world is like that -- incomprehensible and full of surprises.”

“I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

“The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse.”

“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.”

“and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love's ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.”

“Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.”

“The world doesn't make sense until you force it to.”

“I? KILL? said Death, obviously offended. CERTAINLY NOT. PEOPLE GET KILLED, BUT THAT'S THEIR BUSINESS. I JUST TAKE OVER FROM THEN ON. AFTER ALL, IT'D BE A BLOODY STUPID WORLD IF PEOPLE GOT KILLED WITHOUT DYING, WOULDN'T IT?”

“We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory.”

“In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.”

“I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?”

“Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.”

“You can be too rich and too thin, but you can never be too well read or too curious about the world.”