Quotes about the world
page 62

“Ah! Vanitas vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? — Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Vol. II, ch. 27.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

Happiness, Children, Box

“There were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Love, Joy

“When you're soulmates, it hits you like lightning, and you know that's the one person in the world you were meant to be with. You don't think you're soulmates; you just know it's your destiny whether you like it or not.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

Thinking, Personality

“Just as I suspected, my room does look different, post-eclipse. It looks smalled, like it can't contain me anymore.
After all, I've got a whole new world to see.”

Wendy Mass book Every Soul a Star

Source: Every Soul a Star

“Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Variant: To understand just one life you have to swallow the world... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?
Source: Midnight's Children

Life, Understanding

“It gets so tiring, this strong-picking-on-the-weak stuff. It was the story of my life -literally- and it seemed to be a big part of the outside world too. I was sick of it, sick of guys like these, stupid and bullying.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Life, Stupidity, Guy, Strong

“But see that you get on. That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining (1977)
Context: Danny? You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. There’s some things no six-year-old boy in the world should have to be told, but the way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. The world’s a hard place, Danny. It don’t care. It don’t hate you and me, but it don’t love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they’re things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it’s only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. The world don’t love you, but your momma does and so do I. You’re a good boy. You grieve for your daddy, and when you feel you have to cry over what happened to him, you go into a closet or under your covers and cry until it’s all out of you again. That’s what a good son has to do. But see that you get on. That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.

Love

“I don't ever want to live in a world where something like mercy… or maybe it's compassion… is thechoice.”

Jonathan Maberry book Rot & Ruin

Source: Rot & Ruin

“What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Learning

“There are only two forces at work in this world- black and white. Only people are grey.”

Chris Heimerdinger (1963) American writer

Source: Gadiantons and the Silver Sword

People

“If only everyone could know and live with their inner craziness. Would the world be a worse place for it? No, people would be fairer and happier.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

People

“There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Armies of the Night (1968)

“The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room

Change

“the search for meaning is really the search for the lost chord. When the lost chord is discovered by humankind, the discord in the world will be healed and the symphony of the universe will come into complete harmony with itself.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Search, Universe

“It is amazing the quality of human beings that are in this world if we can just get past people not dressing the way we want them to dress.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

People, Way, Past

“you can't escape the world, and you're not responsible for how you look, if you look beauticious or butt ugly. you're not responsible for how you feel or what you say or how you act or anything you do. it's all out of your hands.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Feeling

“… nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Truth

“The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

God, People, Pleasure, Hell

“You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world. People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

People, Way, Feeling

“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Understanding

“Whenever he felt like giving up, plopping himself down, and dying (which was, like, every ten minutes), he reached over and took her hand, just to remember there was warmth in the world.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

“I wouldn't have missed a single minute of it, Not for the whole world.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“The world is dyed with the color of blood. It will never be able to go back to the way it was before.”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Color, Way

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. One of the things which Gertrude Butterwick had impressed on Monty Bodkin when he left for his holiday on the Riviera was that he must be sure to practise his French, and Gertrude’s word was law. So now, though he knew that it was going to make his nose tickle, he said:
‘Er, garçon.’
‘M’sieur?’
‘Er, garçon, esker-vous avez un spot de l’encre et une piece de papier—note papier, vous savez—et une envelope et une plume.’
The strain was too great. Monty relapsed into his native tongue.
‘I want to write a letter,’ he said. And having, like all lovers, rather a tendency to share his romance with the world, he would probably have added ‘to the sweetest girl on earth’, had not the waiter already bounded off like a retriever, to return a few moments later with the fixings.
‘V’la, sir! Zere you are, sir,’ said the waiter. He was engaged to a girl in Paris who had told him that when on the Riviera he must be sure to practise his English. ‘Eenk—pin—pipper—enveloppe—and a liddle bit of bloddin-pipper.’
‘Oh, merci,’ said Monty, well pleased at this efficiency. ‘Thanks. Right-ho.’
‘Right-ho, m’sieur,’ said the waiter.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Luck of the Bodkins

Source: The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)

Law, Girl, Lovers, Holiday

“Mrs. Jennings was a widow, with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Daughters

“it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Red Bird

Good Morning

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition

People, Imagination

“Hell of a world we live in, huh? (…) But it could be worse, huh?"
"That's right," I said, "or even worse, it could be perfect.”

William Gibson Burning Chrome

Source: Burning Chrome (anthology, 1986)

Hell, Perfection

“You know how chickens are, imagining the world coming to an end one moment, then pecking corn the next.”

Lloyd Alexander book The Book of Three

Source: The Book of Three

Imagination

“This world has been connected… tied to the darkness… soon to be completely eclipsed… there is very much to learn… you understand so little… a meaningless effort… one who knows nothing cannot understand nothing.”

Shiro Amano (1976) Japanese manga artist

Source: Kingdom Hearts, Vol. 1

Understanding, Effort, Learning

“That the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty”

David Guterson book Snow Falling on Cedars

Source: Snow Falling on Cedars

Beauty

“Don’t worry, Chris. The day that Sony PlayStation attacks the world and threatens to destroy it, we’ll give you a call. (Katra)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

“A dominant wolf's desire to protect was a strong instinct--Samuel was very dominant. Give him an inch, and he'd take over the world--my life, if I let him." ~Mercy”

Patricia Briggs book Blood Bound

Source: Blood Bound

Life, Strong, Wolf

“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: A Place on Earth

“Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?”

Alice Hoffman book The Dovekeepers

Source: The Dovekeepers

Love

“What’s a little calming distraction for your girlfriend in the midst of world entertainment domination?”
“I’d stop the world from spinning for you.”
That silly line oddly touched me. “I love you.”
“Liked that one, did you?”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love

“Truly, everything in this world depended on time. Time ripened all. If you had time, you succeeded in working the human mud internally and turning it into spirit. Then you did not fear death. If you did not have time, you perished.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ

Death, Fear, Time, Dependency

“We’d met at a carefree time, a moment full of promise, in its place now were the harsh lessons of the real world.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Time

“As far as I can tell, dumping soda on people is the equivalent of ‘Hi, it’s nice to meet you’ in this part of the world. Frankly, I think standard greetings work better, but what do I know?”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

People, Thinking, Parting

“There's a huge seal called 'impossibility' pasted all over this world. And don't ever forget that we're the only ones who can tear it off once and for all.”

Yukio Mishima book The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Tear, Past, Forgetting

“This is the world as it is. This is where you start.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Wise, Deep, Inspirational, Business

“Listen to me, Cammie. There are things in this life…in this world…There are things that you don’t want to remember.” - Rachel Morgan”

Ally Carter Out of Sight, Out of Time

Source: Out of Sight, Out of Time

Life

“The real struggle is about you: you, a person who has to learn to live in the real world, to inhabit her own skin, to know her own heart, to stop waiting for life to begin.”

Caroline Knapp (1959–2002) American writer

Source: Appetites: Why Women Want

Life, Learning, Waiting, Heart

“The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Truth

“where the world ends is where you must begin”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger