Quotes about the world
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“He'd never been an optimist. He saw the world as it was, or he tried to. That was a problem, though, when the truth he saw was so terrible.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Truth, Problem

“We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I'll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone's lapel and make them confess to me and to all.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

“As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Suffering

“I was a new person in the same world, which was a lot more difficult than being the same person in a new world.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

Personality

“I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

Cars

“Hope is a critical thing. Whithout it, we are nothing. Hope shapes will. The will shapes the world.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

Hope

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), p. 294.

Wisdom, People, Thinking, Time

“But part of him wanted to say: Forget the world. He didn't want to be without her.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Parting, Forgetting

“It always makes me proud to love the world somehow- hate's so easy compared.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Love, Hate

“At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find your inner motivation to seek for new ideas on your own.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

School, Motivation, Idea

“I used to think the worst feeling in the world is losing someone you love. But I was wrong the worst feeling in the world is the moment that you realize you've lost yourself.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Love, Feeling, Thinking

“It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.”

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) American novelist, short story writer and poet

Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories

Strong

“My earbuds were in, but I wasn't playing music. I needed to hear the world but didn't want the world to know I was listening.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Variant: I needed to hear the world but didn't want the world to know I was listening.
Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

Music

“The easiest thing in the world is to convince yourself that you're right. As one grows old, it is easier still.”

Robert Ludlum book The Bourne Identity

Source: The Bourne Identity

“An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is always possible to be happy.”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

Happiness, Books

“The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

The Color Purple (1982)

Men, Boy, Change

“Hmmmm… There certainly are a lot of pretty boys in this world.”

L.A. Meyer (1942–2014) American writer

Source: In the Belly of the Bloodhound: Being an Account of a Particularly Peculiar Adventure in the Life of Jacky Faber

Boy

“And after awhile of this my brain and my body and every single inch of me that was alive was flooded with the feeling that I was starving, starving for Edmond.

And what a coincidence, that was the feeling I loved best in the world.”

Meg Rosoff book How I Live Now

Source: How I Live Now

Love, Feeling

“I felt like a kid standing in the world's greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

“The odd thing in this world is that an eager-beaver type, with no original ideas, who mimes those in authority above him right to the last twist of necktie and scrape of chin, always gets noticed. Gets selected. Rises.”

Philip K. Dick book Time Out of Joint

Source: Time Out of Joint

Idea

“I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Strong

“That was the problem with loving people: it made you weak. It made you need them. It made the thought of not having them the worst thing in the world.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Flirt

Source: Flirt

Love, People, Problem

“To tell you the truth I love Sam. It's not a movie kind of love either. I just look at her sometimes and I think she is the prettiest and nicest person in the whole world.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Love, Truth, Thinking, Personality

“Our is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

People, Hell

“The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful & life was so short.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Life, Sadness, Beauty

“Men might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1850s, West India Emancipation (1857)
Context: Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. [... ] Men might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

Men

“The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube, you know. It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can't fight the world alone.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Beauty, Idea, Fight, Personality

“All the world's a stage we're going through.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Source: Anagrams

“Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we're afraid to do it. Taking a chance and stepping beyond the safety of the world we've always known is the only way to grow, though and without risk there is no reward.”

Wil Wheaton (1972) American actor and writer

Source: Just a Geek: Unflinchingly honest tales of the search for life, love, and fulfillment beyond the Starship Enterprise

Way, Chance

“They claim their labours are to build a heaven yet their heaven is populated with horrors. Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. A clock without a craftsman. It's too late. Always has been, always will be…too late.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

“The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.”

Tom Clancy book Clear and Present Danger

Source: Clear and Present Danger

Life

“It’d be a poor kind of world where there was just one explanation for things. ---Rhiow”

Diane Duane book To Visit the Queen

Source: To Visit the Queen

“And it is still true, no matter how old you are -- when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)
Context: Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all — the whole world — had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are — when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

“The world is your oyster…
… too bad you're allergic to shellfish.”

Paul Neilan American novelist

Source: Apathy and Other Small Victories

“A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

For Men

“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)

Light

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it… he who doesn't… pays it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Understanding

“Of all the weapons she had commanded, Elizabeth knew the least of love; and of all the weapons in the world, love was the most dangerous.”

Seth Grahame-Smith book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Love

“Hodie mihi cras tibi, said the inscription. Sic transit gloria mundi. My turn today, yours tomorrow. And thus passes away the glory of the world.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

“She doesn't understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought in world war eleven.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

War, Understanding

“The mercy of the world is you don't know what's going to happen.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Jayber Crow

“I had fooled myself into thinking that I was something important to the rest of the world.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Fools, Thinking

“The world keeps on changing, but there is always something, somewhere, that remains the same.”

Ruskin Bond (1934) British Indian writer

Change

“When we grow up, we find ways to hide our anxieties, our loneliness, our fear and sorrow. But children hide nothing, putting everything into their tears, which they spread liberally about for the whole world to see.”

Yōko Ogawa book The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

Source: The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

Children, Fear, Way, Tear

“I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all… except what you can't be rid of.”

Marilynne Robinson Home

Source: Home

Hope, Fools, Thinking

“Stuff your eyes with wonder... live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Dreams, Dead

“You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.”

Douglas Coupland book Generation A

Source: Generation A

People

“In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Way, Travel

“His view of the world is one that keeps his blood pressure low, sweeping the cholesterol from his relaxed, freeway-sized arteries. Everyone knows he is going to live till age ninety, although the question that goes begging is, “for what?”

Steve Martin book Shopgirl

Source: Shopgirl

Age, Question

“In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Source: On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978

Silence

“Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.”

Milan Kundera book Identity

Pg 82
Identity (1998)

Love, People, Beauty

“Why is there evil in the world? Because sometimes you just wanna fuckin have it, and you don’t care who gets hurt.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Evil, Hurt

“But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.”

Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces

Source: Fugitive Pieces

Time

“Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Life is Elsewhere

Drawing

“We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

People, Thinking, Personality, Loneliness

“I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Sense

“I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. XV).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I’m tired, tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it.

Tear, Heart

“Scientists tell us that the fastest animal in the world, with a speed of 120 mph, is a cow dropped out of a helicopter.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Animals, Speed

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Travel

“Shh,” he whispered. “You asked me if I loved you. I do. I love you more than life itself. Nothing matters in this world but that you live. Can you do that for me? Can you live?”

Elizabeth Hoyt (1970) American writer

Source: To Desire a Devil

Love, Life

“When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.”

Don DeLillo book The Body Artist

Source: The Body Artist

Bird, Housing

“When he died he would not end. The world would end.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

“In a world of bosses, you are your own master”

John Grogan book Marley & Me

Source: Marley & Me

“The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: 1910s, Prejudices, First Series (1919), Ch. 16
Context: The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y. M. C. A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.

“He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Understanding, Time, Waiting

“After long enough, everyone in the world will be you enemy.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

“Isabelle says the Queen of the Seelie Court has requested an audience with is"
Sure" said Magnus. "And Madonna wants me as a backup dancer on her next world tour”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

“Some women are meant to change the world, while others are meant to hold it together. And then there are those of us who simply don't want to be in it, because we know no matter how much we struggle, we can't comfortably fit.”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

Women, Change

“I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.”

Nicholson Baker book The Anthologist

Source: The Anthologist

Thinking, Reading

“Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Source: The Second Plane: 14 Responses to September 11

Love, Parting

“In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Reality

“My dream is to walk around the world. A smallish backpack, all essentials neatly in place. A camera. A notebook. A traveling paint set. A hat. Good shoes. A nice pleated (green?) skirt for the occasional seaside hotel afternoon dance.”

Maira Kalman (1949) Israeli American artist and creator of children's books

Source: The Principles of Uncertainty

Dreams, Shoe, Travel, Dance

“Shouldn't we also ask ourselves what the consequences are of scrambling to provide the "most" of everything to our children in a world of fast dwindling resources?”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Children

“My inner world seems largely to consist of three rotating emotions: embarrassment, rage, and tension. Sometimes I feel excited, but I think that's just positive tension.”

Carrie Fisher book Postcards from the Edge

Source: Postcards from the Edge

Feeling, Thinking, Rage

“No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Immortal

"The Immortal" (1949)

Men, God, Way

“Of all the weapons in the world, love is the most dangerous.”

Seth Grahame-Smith book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Love

“To Homer, libraries were holy places like churches, and the priestly librarians a blessed race, a saving remnant in a world of sin. Whenever God grew impatient and decided to destroy the world he remembered the librarians and stayed his hand.”

Jane Langton (1922–2018) Novelist, children's writer

God

“We live in a world with so many dangers that we have to be careful whom we trust.”

Anthony Horowitz book Raven's Gate

Source: Raven's Gate

“It’s said that the biggest determinant of our lives is whether we see the world as welcoming or hostile. Each becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Hostility

“That’s the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

“Oh God. valentine's Day tomorrow. Why? Why? Why is (the) entire world geared to make people not involved in romance feel stupid when everyone knows romance does not work anyway. Look at (the) royal family. Look at Mum and Dad.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

God, People, Stupidity, Family

“Life and death were so unpredictable. So close to each other. We existed moment to moment, never knowing who would be the next to leave this world.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Life, Death

“… we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we're not REALLY worried about ANYTHING.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Understanding

“I have seen something of this world," she said over the trays, "and there are but two sorts of women in it-- those who take the strength out of a man, and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I am this.”

Rudyard Kipling Kim

Source: Kim

Women

“My wife would fight the world for me. It was miraculous to know that. When no one else had fought for me, I’d somehow found the one soul who would.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Captivated by You

Soul, Fight

“People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they're not. - Lara Jean”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Variant: People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they’re not. There’s no telling how long you will have them near.
Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Life, People, Time