Quotes about the world
page 54
Source: Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On the other hand, it is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important. So that any writer, looking back over even so short a span of time as I am here forced to assess, finds that the things which hurt him and the things which helped him cannot be divorced from each other; he could be helped in a certain way only because he was hurt in a certain way; and his help is simply to be enabled to move from one conundrum to the next — one is tempted to say that he moves from one disaster to the next.
Autobiographical Notes (1952)
[6]
Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932)
"Alaska Glaciers: Graphic Description of the Yosemite of the Far Northwest", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 5 of 11 part series "Notes of a Naturalist") dated 7 September 1879, published 27 September 1879; reprinted as "Baird Glacier" in Letters from Alaska, edited by Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrell (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), pages 28-32 (at page 31); modified slightly and reprinted in Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 5, A Cruise in the Cassiar
First lines of the documentary film series " The National Parks: America's Best Idea http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/" by Ken Burns.
1910s
Source: 20th Century Ghosts
“We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.”
Source: The Black Prince
Source: The Queen of the Damned
Source: The Dream Keeper and Other Poems
“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.”
Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 2
“We live not in the world outside, but in a world inside ourselves.”
Source: The Little Man in The Tower
“You can learn to change the world or go on being changed by it.”
Source: Dragon's Gate
Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
“Fight with realistic
hope, not to destroy
all the world's wrong,
but to renew its good.”
Source: Rose Under Fire
Source: Demon Lord of Karanda
Source: Letter to a Christian Nation
"Thinking for Oneself" http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter8.html
Essays
1910s
Variant: If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. (Address to the French Philosophical Society at the Sorbonne (6 April 1922); French press clipping (7 April 1922) [Einstein Archive 36-378] and Berliner Tageblatt (8 April 1922) [Einstein Archive 79-535])
Variant translation: If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will say I am a man of the world. If it's proven wrong, France will say I am a German and Germany will say I am a Jew.
Variant: If relativity is proved right the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German and the Germans will call me a Jew.
Context: By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be represented as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!
“I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.”
March 25, 1933
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.
“I live in my own little world. But its ok, they know me here.”
“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”
Source: How Reading Changed My Life
Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)
Source: As a Man Thinketh
2000s, 2009, Farewell speech to the nation (January 2009)
Context: As we address these challenges – and others we cannot foresee tonight – America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.
“Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”
Source: Literary Remains, Vol. 1
“We have to save the world," I reminded him.
He reached for me. "The world can wait. I can't.”
Source: Shadowfever
Matrim Cauthon
(15 October 1994)
Source: The Wheel of time series by Robert Jordan
“Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.”
Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
“Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.”
Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Source: Writings: Autobiography/Notes on the State of Virginia/Public & Private Papers/Addresses/Letters
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent
"Rungs of the Ladder" http://books.google.com/books?id=HLpRc3rm5b8C, BBC Radio broadcast, 11 July 1932
1930s
“I've learned that everyone can do their part to repair the world”
Source: 13 Gifts
Part Four, Ch. V (pp. 237-238)
Source: The Good Soldier (1915)
Context: It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.
Is there any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men's lives like the lives of us good people — like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords — broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?
“The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.”
Source: Dreams of the Compass Rose
Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
“We need more fruitcakes in this world, and less bakers!”
Source: The Magician's Elephant
