Quotes about the world page 58
“nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility”
E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet
John Steinbeck book East of Eden
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.
“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”
William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist
“I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw”
Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
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.
“The invisible is only another unexplored country, a brave new world.”
Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist
Source: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer
Source: Invasion of the Boy Snatchers
“I will follow you to the ends of the world.”
Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns
“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”
William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair
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)
“The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.”
Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone
Source: Cutting for Stone
“It's a f*** you world. Well, keep it going anyhow, what the hell.”
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
“When you sleep, your dream world is as real to you as life, isn’t it?”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer
Source: What Dreams May Come: A Novel
Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor
Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
“In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
#110
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
Alan Alda (1936) actor and United States Army officer
Source: Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing
“Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.”
Annie Dillard (1945) American writer
“All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world.”
Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood
Source: Norwegian Wood
“and a fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.”
Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita
Source: The Master and Margarita
“I'd stop the world from spinning for you”
Sylvia Day (1973) American writer
Source: Entwined with You
“Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.”
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer
Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll
Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels
Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer
Source: Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
“Love is the most powerful force in the world. That love can do anything.”
Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels
Variant: that love is the most powerful force in the world. That love can do anything.
Source: City of Fallen Angels
Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
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.
Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian
Variant: The end of the world started when a Pegasus landed on the hood of my car.
Source: The Last Olympian
Anderson Cooper (1967) journalist and author
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
Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
“In this world you're either growing or you're dying so get in motion and grow.”
Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
"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.
“Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.”
James Gleick book Chaos: Making a New Science
Source: Chaos: Making a New Science
“True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.”
William Goldman book The Princess Bride
Source: The Princess Bride
Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”
Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks
Source: Black Skin, White Masks
“Let me finish my beer." (Stark)
"Of course. The end of the world can wait.(Kasabian)”
Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer
Source: Kill the Dead
“In this world of gossip, a good listener is rarer than a great orator.”
Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden
Source: Black Blood
“The world is not beautiful. Therefore it is.”
Keiichi Sigsawa (1972) Japanese writer
Source: Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World
“Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people.”
Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
“Perhaps its not the world that is soundless but we who are deaf.”
Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer
Source: The Tent
“I'm getting really tired of bleeding. Someone stop the world, I want to get off.”
Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer
Source: Night Shift
