Quotes about the world
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“It took a lot of women like that, a lot of women who said "I'm not going to do what you expect me to do, because you have no idea what I'm capable of. I'm going to get dirty and use tools and live the way I want" to move the world forward.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Women, Way, Idea

“For you know that it's a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Source: Paul McCartney, Composer/Artist

Fools

“America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Lie, Age, History, Future

“People around the world are confusing the therapeutic value of self-expression with permission to manipulate others with their wounds.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

People

“I love you all. But it's time to say good-bye, for now.
be careful with the world, or the next time we meet, it might get ugly.
-Tally Youngblood”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

Love, Time

“Rats have a sense of humor. Rats, in fact think the world is very funny. And they are right, dear reader. They are right.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Thinking, Sense

“A book had always been a door to another world… a world much more interesting and fantastical than reality. But she had finally discovered that life could be even more wonderful than fantasy.

And that love could fill the real world with magic.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Scandal in Spring

Love, Life, Books, Reality

“The world's worst flavor combination was mango and menthol.”

Ryū Murakami book Coin Locker Babies

Source: Coin Locker Babies

“He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.”

Salman Rushdie Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Source: Haroun and the Sea of Stories

“The two are now bound inextricably. Should one die, the other will follow. No wepon in this world can wound only one of them”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Aren't we living in a world where heedless men only desire decapitated women?”

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

Source: Life is Elsewhere

Women, Men

“[Ida] "…It's a good world if you don't weaken."”

Graham Greene book Brighton Rock

Source: Brighton Rock (1938)

“Life is fair. We all get the same nine-month shake in the box, and then the dice roll. Some people get a run of sevens. Some people, unfortunately, get snake-eyes. Its just how the world is.”

Stephen King book Full Dark, No Stars

Source: Full Dark, No Stars

Life, People, Box

“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Appearance

“Where would I find enough leather
To cover the entire surface of the earth?
But with leather soles beneath my feet,
It’s as if the whole world has been covered.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

§ 5.13
Bodhicaryavatara, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life
Context: Where would there be leather enough to cover the entire world? With just the leather of my sandals, it is as if the whole world were covered. Likewise, I am unable to restrain external phenomena, but I shall restrain my own mind. What need is there to restrain anything else?

“He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Pleasure, Loss

“When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. "A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

“I guess since the groin is the center of a guy's world, he rarely guesses it isn't the center of yours.”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

Source: Strange Angels

Guy

“Let the world honor you, my Huntress. Live forever in the stars.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Star

“No one would have ever guessed that seven of the world's most talented teenagers were coming to the Henley that day for an entirely different sort of lesson.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

“Don't just read words,' he would tell her as he held up the latest story, 'devour them. Let the words create new worlds.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

Reading

“If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Money, Hope, Knowledge

“When people look you in the eye and call you stupid, dont look away, but tell them that half of the world is stupid and they are one of them because they are dening their own stupidity.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

People, Stupidity

“In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Love, People, Business, Success

“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”

Robert Frost Fire and Ice

"Fire and Ice" (1923)
General sources

Hate, Thinking

“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Despair

“It took him forever to get to downtown Vancouver although Tony had to admit that saving the world by public transportation was a particularly Canadian way to do things.”

Tanya Huff (1957) Canadian fantasy author

Source: Smoke and Shadows

Way

“Tell the world what scares you most. Save the world with some advice from the future.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Future

“Adrian tipped my face up toward his and kissed me. Like always, the world around me stopped moving. No, the world became Adrian, only Adrian.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Kiss, Cute

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Coth, in Book Four : Coth at Porutsa, Ch. XXVI : The Realist in Defeat
Source: The Silver Stallion (1926)
Context: Yet creeds mean very little... The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label.

Fear, Funny

“Now sod off back to your own world, you motherless scum, and save your threats for those who care.”

Darren Shan book Lord Loss

Source: Lord Loss

“In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field.”

Richard Yates book Revolutionary Road

Source: Revolutionary Road

Life, Time

“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Book IV, ch. 11
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

Love, Happiness, Reality

“It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Painting

“Until we have met the monsters in ourselves, we keep trying to slay them in the outer world. And we find that we cannot. For all darkness in the world stems from darkness in the heart. And it is there that we must do our work.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness And Making Miracles

Heart

“Call me sentimental, but there's no-one in the world that I'd like to see get dysentery more than you”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

“Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.”

Rachel Carson book Silent Spring

Source: Silent Spring

Nature, Time

“It was strange how your world could shift on its axis and everything you trusted could invert itself in what seemed like no time at all.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Time

“Your name is Lily Whitney. You are the woman I want at my side night and day. I want you to be the mother of my children someday. I want you for my lover. I want you for the person I turn to when the world gets to be too much.”

Christine Feehan book Shadow Game

Source: Shadow Game

Children, Lovers, Personality, Night

“All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, The Essential Bob Dylan (2000), Things Have Changed (recorded 1999)

Truth, Lie

“Love is the one thing in this world that you should never have to go through alone… For unreciprocated love is the most soul crushing experience you will ever go through.”

Ben Mitchell (1978) New Zealand actor

Love, Soul

“Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvelous as being there in the beginning.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Imagination

“Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things.”

Maurice Sendak book Where the Wild Things Are

Source: Where the Wild Things Are

“Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“Each snowflake was a sigh heard by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. All the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how women suffer.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Women, People, Suffering

“No matter what dimension you're in, there's a big-headed male trying to take over the world.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Lost Colony

“They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

“The world has teeth and it can bite you with them any time it wants.”

Stephen King book The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Source: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)

“If everyone waited to do something good until they had purely unselfish motivations, no good would ever get done in the world. The point is to do it anyway.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: 13 Gifts

Motivation, Waiting

“Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Variant: Unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.

Education

“But it's not enough to know right from wrong. You need the strength to do what's right, even when what you want most in the world is the wrong thing.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Exiled Queen

“We've learned to see the world in gasps.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Learning

“Yesterday is another world. I want to go back there.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“You see, to me, for just a moment, despite all of the colors that touch and grapple with what I see in this world, I will often catch an eclipse when a human dies.
I've seen millions of them.
I've seen more eclipses than I care to remember”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Color

“Unheralded we came into this world. Unheralded we will go out. But while we are in this world, we do such deeds that even if this generation does not remember, the next generation cannot forget.”

Vikas Swarup (1961) Indian novelist and diplomat

Source: Al Milyūnayr Al Mutasharrad =Slumdog Millionaire

Forgetting

“Everything else you see and experience in this world is effect, and that includes your feelings. The cause is always your thoughts.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Feeling

“I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself.”

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

“There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

“In a kinder world," he whispered, "one I promise you I've seen, men and women flirt and dance and love with only the fear of what it would mean without the other in their lives.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Love, Women, Men, Fear

“Bring something incomprehensible into the world!”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Source: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“Nothing in this world was more difficult than love.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Love

“the lonliest sound in the world is other people making love.”

David Benioff book City of Thieves

Source: City of Thieves

Love, People, Making love

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

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

Variants: I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots. I fear the day when technology overlaps our humanity. It will be then that the world will have permanent ensuing generations of idiots. 1995 film Powder includes a similar quotation attributed to Einstein: It’s become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity. Although it is a popular quote on the internet, there is no substantial evidence that Einstein actually said that. It does not appear in "The Ultimate Quotable Einstein" from Princeton University Press nor in any reliable source. " Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/19/tech-surpass/" concluded that it probably emerged as a meme on the internet as late as 2012. Misattributed

Fear