Quotes about the world
page 14

“Meet me where the sky touches the sea. Wait for me where the world begins.”

Jennifer Donnelly (1963) American writer

Waiting, Sea

“The world is teeming; anything can happen.”

John Cage book Silence: Lectures and Writings

Source: Silence: Lectures and Writings

“I live my life in growing orbits which move out over this wondrous world, I am circling around God, around ancient towers and i have been circling for a thousand years. And I still dont know if I am an eagle or a storm or a great song.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

Life, God

“When there are many worlds
you can choose the one
you walk into each day.”

Jacqueline Woodson book Brown Girl Dreaming

Source: Brown Girl Dreaming

“There's all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

“I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.”

Virginia Woolf book The Voyage Out

Source: The Voyage Out

Beauty, Music, Feeling

“It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Stupidity

“She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

Home, Sad, Heartbreaking, Depressing

“To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“Love removes the world for you, and just as surely when it's going well as when it's going badly.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

Source: The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose

Love

“The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Honestly," she sighed, "I don't know what kind of life we'll have together, with me always flying off in one direction and you in the other."
I smiled. "It's a good thing the world's round," I said.”

Kenneth Oppel (1967) Canadian children's writer

Life, Smile, Flying

“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

A Poet's Advice (1958)
Context: Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel …
the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Fight, Night

“I am happier than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world, that he can spare from me.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Love, Smile

“I love to sleep. Do you? Isn't it great? It really is the best of both worlds. You get to be alive and unconscious.”

Rita Rudner (1953) American comedian

Love, Sleep

“I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force--a wild pain and decay--also accompanies everything.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

Pain, Feeling, Flowers, Learning

“The world going insane and evil letting slip the birds of war is no excuse for sloppy vocabulary.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

War, Bird, Evil

“You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Beauty, Singing, Dance, Parting

“I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

People, Justice, Smile

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

William Saroyan The Time of Your Life

The Time of Your Life (1939)
Context: Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live — so that in the wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.
Context: In the time of your life, live — so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart. Be the inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live — so that in the wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

Life, Smile, Time

“There is no greater thing you can do with your life and your work than follow your passions – in a way that serves the world and you.”

Richard Branson (1950) English business magnate, investor and philanthropist

Life, Way, Passion, Powerful

“See the world as it is, not as you wish it would be”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Wise

“A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.”

Joseph Hall (1574–1656) British bishop

“The CHILD must know that he is a MIRACLE, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world will not be, another child like him.”

Pablo Casals (1876–1973) Catalan cellist and conductor

“The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs… has been, not whether be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Age, Question, Parting

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer … It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)

Fear, Dreams, Hope, Democracy

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

Time, Painting

“You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

People

“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

“Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Life, Lie, Dreams, Change

“The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

6.43
Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

Happiness

“This world is but canvas to our imaginations.”

Henry David Thoreau A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Variant: The world is but a canvas to the imagination. <br class="br">Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday

Imagination

“We have a large public that is very ignorant about world affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist

Morning Joe (July 13, 2011).

Appearance

“The world isn't black and white, Annie, it's shades of grey.”

Tami Hoag (1959) American writer

Source: A Thin Dark Line

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Jaques, Act II, scene vii.
Variant: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)

Women, Men, Age, Time

“The only sin in the world is ignorance.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack: the round world
Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens.”

William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra

Source: Antony and Cleopatra

“What's the point of living if you're going to hate the world? Guard your heart if you have to, but don't shut it away.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Bruiser

Hate, Heart

“The world order needs a major overhaul.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Source: The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror

“The artist works by locating the world in himself”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

“It is interesting to note that an overwhelming majority of citizens in the world's three largest democracies have different religions: India (81 percent Hindu), the United States (76 percent Christian), and Indonesia (87 percent Muslim). Two of them have elected women as leaders of their government.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Women, Religion, Democracy

“It was as if his point of view had, within seconds, gone from that of an ant to that of an eagle.
For the sky was hollow, and the world was round.”

Christopher Paolini book Inheritance

Source: Inheritance

“The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, 'What else are women for?”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: A W.E.B. Du Bois Reader

Women

“Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.”

Robertson Davies book World of Wonders

Source: World of Wonders

Stupidity, Evil

“Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Art, Communication, Knowledge, Science

“Some day I shall sing to thee in the sunrise of some other world, I have seen thee before in the light of the earth, in the love of man.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

Source: Stray Birds

Love, Light, Singing

“Nefertiti, the most beautiful calico in the world, chose me as her own six short years ago.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Beauty

“What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“But for half a minute she wished it was a different sort of day, even though she knew that nothing good could come from wanting at the world.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Thinking, Sense, Personality

“The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with their mouths and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.”

Karl Rahner (1904–1984) German Catholic theologian

“O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!”

William Shakespeare The Tempest

Source: The Tempest

People

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

“Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.”

Jean Webster (1876–1916) American novelist

Understanding, Time, Past

“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Change

“All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Secret

“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men (1925)

Way

“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair… the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Hate, Hell, Despair

“I am so beastly tired of mankind and the world that nothing can interest me unless it contains a couple of murders on each page or deals with the horrors unnameable and unaccountable that leer down from the external universes.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Universe

“But, said Alice, if the world has absolutely no sense, who's stopping us from inventing one?”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Sense

“Don't sign your name
between worlds,

surmount
the manifold of meanings,

trust the tearstain,
learn to live.”

Paul Celan (1920–1970) Romanian poet and translator

Source: Glottal Stop

Learning

“I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Hope

“Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Beauty, Art

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Life, Romantic, For Her, For Him

“Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Variant: To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 22.

Way

“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano!”

William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice

Source: The Merchant of Venice

“The world is not always ours to understand….”

Heather Graham (1970) actress from the United States

Source: Dust to Dust

Understanding

“until the end of the world, all whys will be answered, but now, you can only ask!”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Source: Bob Marley Talking

“To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Sadness

“All he knew was that you couldn't hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that'd make the world, in a small way, a better place. Like shooting someone.”

Terry Pratchett book The Fifth Elephant

Source: The Fifth Elephant

Happiness, Peace, Hope, Way

“I don't care," Clary said. "He'd do it for me. Tell me he wouldn't. If I were missing-"
"He'd burn the whole world down till he could dig you out of the ashes. I know," Alec said.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“It almost seemed as if there must be some random and of course unfair thrift in the emotional housekeeping of the world, if the great happiness--however temporary, however flimsy--of one person could come out of the great unhappiness of another.”

Alice Munro book Too Much Happiness

Source: Too Much Happiness

Happiness, Personality

“I stand between two worlds, am at home in neither, and in consequence have rather a hard time of it.”

Thomas Mann book Tonio Kröger

Source: Tonio Kröger (1903), Ch. 9, as translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan
Context: I stand between two worlds, am at home in neither, and in consequence have rather a hard time of it. You artists call me a commoner, and commoners feel tempted to arrest me … I do not know which wounds me more bitterly. Commoners are stupid; but you worshippers of beauty who call me phlegmatic and without yearning, ought to reflect that there is an artistry so deep, so primordial and elemental, that no yearning seems to it sweeter and more worthy of tasting than that for the raptures of common-placeness.

Home, Time

“The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.”

Alice Hoffman book Here on Earth

Source: Here on Earth

Star, Appearance

“By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

“All the world's a stage.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

“One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

“People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People, Sense

“To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Life, Science

“The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Interview on Israeli television, as quoted in "Happy 65th Birthday to Prof. Stephen Hawking!" at StarTrek.com (8 January 2007) http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/37695.html

“Twinkle, twinkle little bat How I wonder what you're at! Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Tea, Flying

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Books, History, Reading

“Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Metaphysics: Concept and Problems

Evil

“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), First Inaugural address (1981)
Context: Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.

Women, Men, Courage

“As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Truth, Thinking

“Love is the strongest force in the world.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Love, For Wife

“Anyone can slay a dragon… but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Love

“I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Aesthetics and Politics

Star

“She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Life, Children, People, Light

“To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294

Education, Sense

“I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Knowledge

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away…”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Dead

“If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty.”

Terry Pratchett book Feet of Clay

Source: Feet of Clay

Success

“Some people work an entire lifetime and wonder if they ever made a difference to the world. But the Marines don't have that problem.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Letter to Lance Cpl. Joe Hickey http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,88163,00.html (23 September 1983), R.W. "Dick" Gaines http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/marinesquote.html refers in detail <br class="br">1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

People, Problem

“Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Source: The Poems of John Donne; Miscellaneous Poems (Songs and Sonnets) Elegies. Epithalamions, or Marriage Songs. Satires. Epigrams. the Progress of

“Be a lover of the world, it is the only way to survive in it.”

Janosch (1931) German author

Way, Lovers

“Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing.”

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) Italian patriot, politician and philosopher

“An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.”

Irwin Shaw (1913–1984) American politician

Parting

Quotes about the world page 14

Quotes about the world
page 14