Quotes about the world
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“She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

Beauty, Change, Beauty

“We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.”

Ira Glass (1959) American radio personality

Pleasure, Joy

“Yes, and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.”

Jasper Fforde book First Among Sequels

Source: First Among Sequels

Imagination

“What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?”

Richard Russo Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

“There's nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: The Wind Through the Keyhole

Night

“He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Way, Sea

“the world is better without
them.

only the plants and the animals are
true comrades.

I drink to them and with
them.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Drink, Animals

“Isn't that the way of the world? We want the sweet things, but we need the unpleasant ones.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Way

“The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Dreams, Reality

“In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Original: (99) Rahim Khan
Variant: It was Homaira and me against the world.... In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Way

“We save the world by being alive ourselves.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

“There are just some kind of men who-who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Men, Business, Learning

“I had an inheritance from my father,
It was the moon and the sun.
And though I roam all over the world,
The spending of it’s never done.”

Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Sun

“I never wanted to be feared. If I regret one thing, it is the fear I have caused. Fear is the tool of tyrants. Unfortunately, when the fate of the world is in question, you use whatever tools are available.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Fate, Fear, Question

“She curled up and pressed her cheek against his chest. Her ear was right above his heart. She was listening to his thoughts. "I need to know this," Aomame said. "That we're in the same world, seeing the same things.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Heart

“In a world of monotonous horror
there could be no salvation in wild dreaming.”

Richard Matheson book I Am Legend

Source: I Am Legend

Dreams

“To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world's sky.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger

Star, Thinking

“If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Women, Time

“I smoke. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your fuckin' mouth.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

“Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

Entry in his journal before his last public appearance, the ceremony at which he received the National Medal for Literature, quoted by Susan Cheever, Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin (1984).

Literature, Lovers, Despair

“The world is terrible," said Mark tonelessly. "And some are drawn down into it and drown there, and some rise above and carry others with them.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“Personally, I don’t like inherently happy people. I don’t trust them. I think there’s something seriously wrong with anyone who isn’t at least a little let down by the world.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Happiness, People, Thinking, Personality

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Way, Bird, Sense

“If he'd learned one thing while he'd been away, it was that loneliness is the most taboo subject in the world. Forget sex or politics or religion. Or even failure. Loneliness is what clears out a room.”

Douglas Coupland book Miss Wyoming

Source: Miss Wyoming

Religion, Sex, Failure, Learning

“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying (1930)

People

“We're all people", he said simply. "It doesn't matter if you're two, thirty-two, or ninety-two. Everyone wants to be treated with respect. Everyone wants to feel like they matter in this world.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Charmed Thirds

People, Feeling

“The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed from the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love

“Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can using only their hands and feet make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

People, Art, History, Training

“It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Variant: Where I'm living is not a storybook world. It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.
Source: 1Q84

“Now, you'll have to answer my questions."
"Oh, very well," Set said. "I like Brazil for the World Cup. I'd advise investing in platinum and small-cap funds. And your lucky numbers this week are 2, 13--"
"Not those questions!" Menshikov snapped.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

Question

“Cruelty and wrong are not the greatest forces in the world. There is nothing eternal in them. Only love is eternal.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael

Love

“Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“With our love, we could save the world.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Love, Cute, Romantic, Anniversary

“And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware of what they're going through.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Changes
Song lyrics, Hunky Dory (1971)
Context: I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence.
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same.
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware of what they're going through.

Children, Change

“I lost a world the other day. Has anybody found? You'll know it by the rows of stars around it's forehead bound. A rich man might not notice it; yet to my frugal eye of more esteem than ducats. Oh! Find it, sir, for me!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems

Star

“And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty seperate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Reality, Housing

“Self respect, Colie. If you don't have it, the world will walk all over you.”

Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon

Source: Keeping the Moon

“The theater is the only institution in the world which has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough and devoted people to keep it alive.”

John Steinbeck book Once There Was a War

Source: Once There Was a War

People

“You and I are the force for transformation in the world. We are the consciousness that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into.”

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

Nature, Reality

“This was the kind of dress that changed the world. The kind of dress that started religions.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

Religion, Change

“You get older and you learn there is one sentence just four worlds long and if you can say it to yourself it offers more comfort than almost any other. It goes like this… Ready ”
“Ready.”
“At least I tried.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

Learning

“Children are the ones that know exactly what's going on in the world, you know. They 'see' more than adults, 'believe' in more, are honest, and will always, 'always' let you know where you stand.”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

Children

“I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, "I was wrong."”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

Pieces of Eight (1982)
Source: Pieces Of Eight

Love, Hate

“I saw the Fall of Troy! World War Five! I was pushing boxes at the Boston Tea Party! Now I'm gonna die in a dungeon…. [disgustedly] in Cardiff!”

Russell T. Davies (1963) Screenwriter, former executive producer of Doctor Who

War, Tea, Box

“If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Sudden Death (1983)
Variant: "If the World Made Sense, Men Would Ride Sidesaddle" was the title of a 1993 one-man comedy by Ed Navis, performed at Wings Theatre, New York.
Variant: If the world were a logical place, then men would ride side-saddle.

Men, For Men

“What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The Powerbook (2000)

Love, Life, Happiness, Truth

“If only you could really use a fail-proof system to know who was worth keeping and who needed to be thrown away. It would make it so much easier to move through the world, picking and choosing what connections to make, or whether to make any at all.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

“People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Life, People, Past, Future

“I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“For as long as the world spins and the earth is green with new wood, she will lie in this box and not in my arms.”

Lurlene McDaniel book Hit and Run

Source: Hit and Run

Lie, Box

“Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

Time

“In the real world, you can make your own miracles.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

“I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.”.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“The world will fall, the gods will die, and I will never achieve a perfect score on this stupid machine.
-Dionysus”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

God, Stupidity, Perfection

“If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

“Joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks. The world has few stories glad in themselves, and we must have gay ears to defy Despite”

Stephen R. Donaldson book Lord Foul's Bane

Foamfollower, Lord Foul's Bane

Joy

“Like the wild beasts, she lives without a future. She inhabits only the present tense, a fugue of the continuous, a world of sensual immediacy as without hope as it is without despair.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Source: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Hope, Future, Despair

“I'd scale that monster sycamore if I could. Right to the top. And I'd yell her name across the rooftops for the whole world to hear.

-Bryce”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

“You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Variant: You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.
Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 4 (Sandhurst).
Source: My Early Life, 1874-1904

Hurt