Quotes about the world

page 42

Variant: The world will try to change you into someone else. Don't let them. That's the best advice anyone can give you.
Source: The Warrior Heir

Variant: No Man Is An Island; Every Book Is A World.
Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Source: The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1 1931-1934: Vol. 1

Source: The Lake of Souls

Source: The Satanic Verses (1988)

Source: Shantaram

Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Source: A Circle of Quiet
Context: In Kenneth Grahame's beautiful book, The Wind In The Willows, Mole and Rat go to the holy island of the great god, Pan. It is a superb piece of religious writing, but because it has gone beyond fact, it is deeply upsetting and untruthful to some people. If a story is not specified as being Christian, it is not Christian. But that is not so.
I think that this scene is upsetting because it calls us beyond fact into the vast world of imagination, and imagination is a word of many dimensions.

Source: Father Mine

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), p. 279, referring to Amaranta

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Source: The Road

Source: Listening for Lions

Source: Dead Beat

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

Source: A Separate Reality

Source: The Separate Notebooks

Variant: To the illuminated mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

Variant: I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.
Source: Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 37.

Source: Sufi Thought and Action

Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: Message in a Bottle

Source: The Alchemist

W [ViVa] (1931) LVII

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Batman : The Killing Joke (1988)
Source: Batman: The Killing Joke
Context: I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Naruto, Band 11

Source: Number the Stars

Source: Watermelon

Source: Shadow Kiss

Source: Inkheart

Source: Love the One You're With

Source: The Hunger Games

Source: Shantaram

Source: Survivor

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 5: The Passes <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 328 -->
Context: Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand.

Source: Heist Society

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: This Side of Paradise

Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Source: Can Man Live Without God

Source: A Salty Piece of Land

Source: Wide Awake

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Foreword to The Dreaded Comparison: Animal Slavery and Human Slavery (1996) by Marjorie Spiegel, p. 14 http://books.google.com/books?ei=je4zTPjrBcmTnQfXmMCLBA&amp;ct=result&amp;id=8u_tAAAAMAAJ&amp;dq=dreaded+comparison+%22exist+for+their+own%22&amp;q=%22exist+for+their+own%22.

Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 2 : The West In The World, p. 310
Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 2 : The West In The World, p. 308
Context: Normatively the Western universalist belief posits that people throughout the world should embrace Western values, institutions, and culture because they embody the highest, most enlightened, most liberal, most rational, most modern, and most civilized thinking of humankind.
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.
Context: Cultural and civilizational diversity challenges the Western and particularly American belief in the universal relevance of Western culture. This belief is expressed both descriptively and normatively. Descriptively it holds that peoples in all societies want to adopt Western values, institutions, and practices. If they seem not to have that desire and to be committed to their own traditional cultures, they are victims of a “false consciousness” comparable to that which Marxists found among proletarians who supported capitalism. Normatively the Western universalist belief posits that people throughout the world should embrace Western values, institutions, and culture because they embody the highest, most enlightened, most liberal, most rational, most modern, and most civilized thinking of humankind.
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous. … The belief that non-Western peoples should adopt Western values, institutions, and culture is immoral because of what would be necessary to bring it about. The almost-universal reach of European power in the late nineteenth century and the global dominance of the United States in the late twentieth century spread much of Western civilization across the world. European globalism, however, is no more. American hegemony is receding if only because it is no longer needed to protect the United States against a Cold War-style Soviet military threat. Culture, as we have argued, follows power. If non-Western societies are once again to be shaped by Western culture, it will happen only as a result of the expansion, deployment, and impact of Western power. Imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism. In addition, as a maturing civilization, the West no longer has the economic or demographic dynamism required to impose its will on other societies and any effort to do so is also contrary to the Western values of self-determination and democracy. As Asian and Muslim civilizations begin more and more to assert the universal relevance of their cultures, Westerners will come to appreciate more and more the connection between universalism and imperialism.
Context: A world in which cultural identities — ethnic, national, religious, civilizational — are central, and cultural affinities and differences shape the alliances, antagonisms, and policies of states has three broad implications for the West generally and for the United States in particular.
First, statesmen can constructively alter reality only if they recognize and understand it. The emerging politics of culture, the rising power of non-Western civilizations, and the increasing cultural assertiveness of these societies have been widely recognized in the non-Western world. European leaders have pointed to the cultural forces drawing people together and driving them apart. American elites, in contrast, have been slow to accept and to come to grips with these emerging realities.

Source: The Way of Kings

Source: Black Magic Sanction

Source: The History of Love

The Nasty Bits (2006)

Mariam, p. 370
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
Context: She was leaving the world as woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad.

&quot;Letter from London&quot; (18 September 2003) http://palinstravels.co.uk/static-51?topic=1752&amp;forum=12 <br class="br">Context: Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won’t be made safer by creating barriers between people. Cries of “They’re evil, let’s get ‘em” or “The infidels must die” sound frightening, but they’re desperately empty of argument and understanding. They’re the rallying cries of prejudice, the call to arms of those who find it easier to hate than admit they might be not be right about everything.<br>Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.

Source: Gilead

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Source: Frost Burned

Source: The Two Princesses of Bamarre

Source: Lonesome Dove

Source: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Source: Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception (2005)

Source: Dark Reunion

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Source: Of Mice and Men

Source: V for Vendetta

Source: Emma (1815)

Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Source: Pretties

Source: Frankenstein

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Source: Incantation

Source: The Pursuit of Love