Quotes about the world

page 16

“You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew… God doesn't make the world this way. We do.”

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.”

“If you kept changing the way people saw the world, you ended up changing the way you saw yourself.”

“If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.”

“It's not much. You begin by thinking there is something extraordinary about it. But you'll find out, when you've been out in the world a while longer, unhappiness is the commonest thing there is.”

“There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”

“Ain’t many guys travel around together,” he mused. “I don’t know why. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”

“He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.”

“Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.”

“if the world changed, i could not exist, and if i changed, the world could not exist”

“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.”

“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.”

“Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?”

“The end of the world has come often, and continues to come.”

“The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.”

“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”

“Nobody asks you to love the whole world, only to be honest, ehrlich. Don't have a loud mouth. The more you love people the more they'll mix you up. A child loves, a person respects. Respect is better than love.”

“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.”

“Books are the most wonderful friends in the world. When you meet them and pick them up, they are always ready to give you a few ideas. When you put them down, they never get mad; when you take them up again, they seem to enrich you all the more.”

“The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you. When the spinning stops, that'll be the time to worry. Not before.”

“Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is.”

“Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear. Why on earth are you there, when you're everywhere-come and get your share.”

“WE live in this world when we love it.”

“You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed…”

“If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.”

“Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

“The world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going”

“Everything's about my personal entertainment. The world is my stage. Keep it up- you're becoming a star performer in the show.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the world's lovers are not with their first choice. That's what makes the jukebox play.”

“The jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world.”

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

“True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.”

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

“The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or to give trouble. They want to get ahead, to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a gung fu man, who rejects all forms of self-assertiveness and competition”

“Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.”

“In this world the only opinion that holds court is prejudice.”

“the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.”

“One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.”

“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.”

“turn him into stars and form a constellation in his image. His face will make the heavens so beautiful that the world will fall in love with the night and forget about the garish sun.”

“Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”

“Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity's place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists.”

“The hardest thing in the world is believing someone can change. It's always easier to go along with the way things are than to admit that you might have been wrong in the first place.”

“Don't let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment.”

“The world’s bumper sticker reads: Life sucks, and then you die. Perhaps Christian bumper stickers should read: Life sucks, but then you find hope and you can’t wait to die.”

“I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”

“have you ever seen a genius out there looking for a job? it's the saddest thing in the world. no one will hire him. there is only one place where he is always welcome- at the bottom.”

“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

“No one stands on the top of the world. Not you, not me, not even gods. But the unbearable vacancy of the throne in the sky is over. From now on… I will be sitting on it.”

“The two most common elements in the world are hydrogen and stupidity.”

“I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.”

“Strive for excellence, not perfection, because we don't live in a perfect world.”

“Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.”

“A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.”

“I like talking to a brick wall- it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!”

“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.”

“For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.”

“THE MAJORITY of children born into the world tend to inherit the beliefs of their parents, and that to me is one of the most regrettable facts of them all”

“Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.”

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

“It seems that our brave new world is becoming less tolerant, spiritual and educated than it ever was when I was young.”

“Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.”

“I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.”

“I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”

“Worldly Wisdom

Do not stay in the field!
Nor climb out of sight.
The best view of the world
Is from a medium height.”

“The world is everything that is the case.”

“A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, "This is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.”

“Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see, one chance out between two worlds, fire walk with me!”

“it is only as anthat existence and the world are eternally.”

“The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art.”

“The real world is much smaller than the imaginary”

“up above the world you fly, like a tea tray in the sky…”

“In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.”

“Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.”

“We came into the world like brother and brother,
And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.”

“True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.”

“Sometimes it's only the young ones who are crazy enough to change the world.”

“As large as worlds. As old as Time. As patient as a brick.”

“Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.”

“I am glad that the country world…retains a power to use our English tongue. It is a part of its sense of reality, of its vocabulary of definite terms, and of its habit of earthly common sense. I find this country writing an excellent corrective of the urban vocabulary of abstractions and of the emotion disguised as thinking which abstractions and humbug have loosed upon the world. May there always be such things as a door, a milk pail, and a loaf of bread, and words to do them honor.”

“In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power —
And thus we half-men struggle.”

“[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.”

“The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God…or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world.”

“They were smiling at each other as if this was the beginning of the world.”

“One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.”

“So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life.”

“There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock.”

“The only thing you've got in this world is what you can sell.”

“Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.”

“It wasn't the fog I minded, Cathleen. I really love fog. It hides you from the world and the world from you. You feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or touch you any more. Its the foghorn I hate. It won't let you alone. It keeps reminding you, and warning you, and calling you back.”

“Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, that makes the world go round!”

“They'd smash up the world if they thought it would make a pretty noise.”

“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.”

“When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.”

“The world doesn't hate you as much as you think it does.”

“Glorious indeed is the world of God around us, but more glorious the world of God within us.”

“If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”

“I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns,… broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J. K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy.”

“I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.”