Quotes about the world

page 58

Source: Gregor the Overlander

Variant: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
Context: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Texts and Pretexts (1932), p. 270
Context: It is man's intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. … Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as punishment for its transgressions. Therefore you never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. No horse, for example would kill one of its foals to make the wind change direction. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough.

Source: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Source: I, Lucifer

Source: Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food

Source: Invasion of the Boy Snatchers

Source: The World's Wife

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: The Bluest Eye

Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out. Vol. II, ch. 27.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

Source: Cutting for Stone

Source: The Diviners

Source: On Stranger Tides

Source: Gone With the Wind

Source: What Dreams May Come: A Novel

Source: View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

Source: Ulysses

Source: The Riddle

Source: Batman: The Killing Joke

Source: Choke

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

#110
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Source: Oryx and Crake

Source: Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself

Source: The Song of Achilles

Source: The Blue Sword

Source: Norwegian Wood

Source: The Princess Bride

Source: The Master and Margarita

Source: Entwined with You

Source: I and Thou

Source: City of Glass

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Lady Audley's Secret

Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Source: Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

Source: UnWholly

Source: Dragons of Summer Flame

Variant: that love is the most powerful force in the world. That love can do anything.
Source: City of Fallen Angels

Variant: There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.

Source: The Water-Babies

Variant: The end of the world started when a Pegasus landed on the hood of my car.
Source: The Last Olympian

Source: The Reader

Source: Nausea

Source: Naruto, Vol. 27: Departure

Variant: The farther you go, however, the harder it is to return. The world has many edges, and it's easy to fall off.
Source: Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

"The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Patient Zero

Source: Chaos: Making a New Science

Source: The Princess Bride

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Source: Black Skin, White Masks

Source: The Invitation

Source: Kill the Dead

Source: Changes

Source: Black Blood

Source: The Library at Night

Source: Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World

Source: Lonesome Traveler

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: The Power of One

Source: Dead to the World

Source: The Alchemist

Source: The Tent

Source: The Book Thief

Source: The Pillars of the Earth

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: Paradise Lost

Source: Tell-All

Source: Night Shift

Source: Galilee

Source: Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories