Quotes about the world
page 16

“They wouldn't fire me. Even the salesmen liked me. They were robbing the boss out the back door but I didn't say anything. That was their little game. It didn't interest me. I wasn't much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Variant: I wasn't much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing."
Source: Post Office (1971)

“An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Suffering

“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.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

God, Fate, Dogs, Way

“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.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: Wisdom of the Heart

Life, God, Singing

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

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

People, Way, Change

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

Paul Beatty (1962) American writer

“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.”

Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970) German novelist

Source: Flotsam

Thinking

“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.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

Change, Sun

“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.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men

Travel, Guy

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

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

Way, Speed

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

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden

Time

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

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Change

“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.”

Ovid Metamorphoses

Source: Metamorphoses

God, Books, Way, Soul

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

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Beauty, Christmas, Christmas

“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?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life, Hell

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

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

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

As quoted in Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development (1999) by Chris Maser.

History, Sense

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

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Source: The Collected Works

Fear

“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.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March

Love, People, Personality

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

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 1
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Happiness

“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.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Life Is Worth Living

Books, Idea, Madness

“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.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Time

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

Daniel Handler (1970) American novelist, children's writer, creator of Lemony Snicket

Feeling

“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.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

John Lennon, in "Instant Karma!" (written 27 January 1970)
Lyrics
Context: Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Everyone you meet 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
Gonna get your share Well, we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah, we all shine on
C'mon and on and on, on, on

Pain, Fear

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

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

279
Stray Birds (1916)

Love, For Parents

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

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

Change

“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.”

T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer

Thinking

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

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

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

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

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

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Star, Personality

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

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Lovers

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

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

“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.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Two, Ch. 8
Source: On the Road (1957)

People, Feeling, Goodbye

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

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Tear

“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.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Life, People, Beauty, Music

“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”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

People

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

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

Intelligence

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

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

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

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Personality

“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.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Help

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

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

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

Love, Making love

“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.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Love, Beauty, Star, 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.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Age, Thinking, Sad

“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.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

People, Intelligence, Universe

“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.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Way, Change

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

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Success, Madness

“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.”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Source: The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth

Life, Hope, Waiting, Reading

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

William Shakespeare The Tempest

Source: The Tempest

Anniversary, Wedding, For Her

“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.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

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

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

Religion, Country, Leadership

“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.”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

God

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

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

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.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Children, Soul

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

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Perfection

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

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Hope, Future, Personality

“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.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Women, Men, Daughters

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

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

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

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

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

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

Source: My Name is Red

Home, Lovers, Heart

“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”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Children, Parent

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

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Books

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

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Nature, Beauty, Peaceful

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

Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) British singer-songwriter

Education

“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.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hears can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

Support, Thinking, Effort, Science

“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.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Water

“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.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“Worldly Wisdom

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

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: The Gay Science

Wisdom

“The world is everything that is the case.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Variant: The world is all that is the case.
Context: The world is all that is the case. (1)

“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.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Thinking, Sense

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

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

Chance, Past, Future

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

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: The Birth of Tragedy/The Case of Wagner

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

Theodor W. Adorno book Aesthetic Theory

Source: Aesthetic Theory

Art

“The real world is much smaller than the imaginary”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“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

“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.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Failure, Strong, Success

“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.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Laughter

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

William Shakespeare The Comedy of Errors

Source: The Comedy of Errors

“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.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King

Exercises

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

Diana Peterfreund (1979) American writer

Source: Across a Star-Swept Sea

Change

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

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

Time

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

Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970) German novelist

Source: Flotsam

“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.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Thinking, Reality, Sense, Parting

“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.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Source: Robert Browning's Poetry

Men

“[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.”

Robert Penn Warren book All the King's Men

Source: All the King's Men

History, Time, Housing

“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.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Life, God

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Love of the Last Tycoon

Source: The Last Tycoon

Smile

“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.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Children, Way, Suffering, Animals

“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.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Red Bird

Life, Imagination

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

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Variant: There is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Loneliness

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

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Source: Death of a Salesman

“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.”

Bertrand Russell The Problems of Philosophy

Source: 1910s, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

Life, Lying, Question