Quotes about the world
page 65

“She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

Love

“No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere…”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

No Coward Soul Is Mine (1846)
Context: No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
Context: p>No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life — that in me has rest,
As I — undying Life — have power in Thee!Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main...</p

Soul

“Compromise is said to be the way of the world and yet I find myself feeling sick trying to accept what it has done to me.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God (1994)

Way, Feeling

“When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.”

Tuli Kupferberg (1923–2010) American anarchist, poet, publisher and musician.

“The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Change, Motivational, Deep, Success

“There are two kinds of people in this world : those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

People

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality" says Iris Murdoch.
But given the state of the world, is it wise?”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

Life, Reality

“Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I'm close enough, she can push me back into the world.”

Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces

Source: Fugitive Pieces

“It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

Kiss, Past, Future, Sincerity

“But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I'd done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.

Instead I had Hell.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: Darkness, Be My Friend

Girl, Hell, Parent

“You, as a food buyer, have the distinct privilege of proactively participating in shaping the world your children will inherit.”

Joel Salatin (1957) American environmentalist

Source: Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food

Children, Food

“… we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“If theater is ritual, then dance is too… It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Fear, Dance

“I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: A Thousand Mornings

Tree

“Over this odd world, this half the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

Tear

“Where to start?
Everything cracks and shakes,
The air trembles with similes,
No one world's better than another;
the earth moans with metaphors.”

Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) Russian poet and essayist

Source: Selected Poems

“If God made this world, then i would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

God, Heart

“There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. People so tired, mutilated either by love or no love.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Love, People, Loneliness

“Hope is the most treacherous thing in the world. It lifts you and lets you plummet. But as long as you're being lifted you don't worry about plummeting.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

Hope

“I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, I Can Hear You, the Rest of the World Hears You (September 2001)

People

“NGOs have a complicated space in neoliberal politics. They are supposed to mop up the anger. Even when they are doing good work, they are supposed to maintain the status quo. They are the missionaries of the corporate world.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Anger

“The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“… lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Music, Thinking, Painting

“By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Men, Way, Learning

“I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words”

Alfred De Vigny book Stello

Source: Stello

Children

“Flip-flop, hippety-hop, offa your rocker and over the top, life's a fiction and the world's a lie, so put on some Creedence and let's get high.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three

Source: The Drawing of the Three

Life, Lie

“Because you showed one face to all the rest of the world, and another to me.”

Sherwood Smith book Crown Duel

Source: Crown Duel

“Every thing in this world exist to wear you down”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 21

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book III, Ch. 13
Essais (1595), Book III
Source: The Complete Essays
Context: No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

“It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Life, Box

“As I'm never going to be old, I'm glad that I never lost my sense of wonder about the world, although I have a hunch it would have happened pretty soon. I loved the world, its beauty and bigness as well as its smallness.”

Douglas Coupland Hey Nostradamus!

Source: Hey Nostradamus!

Love, Beauty, Sense

“You may not agree, you may not care, but
if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world — and there are plenty — very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Dog Songs

Love, Books, Dogs

“It's the idea that everyone has one and just one soulmate in the world, and that if you find them, you recognize them immediately.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

Idea

“It was as if when I looked into his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world… on a windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of the waves.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Children, Light

“He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

Heart

“Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.”

Maya Angelou book Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Love, Life, Pleasure, Art

“Like a fool, I fell in love with you,
Turned my whole world upside down”

Eric Clapton (1945) English musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist

Love, Fools

“We all start out so damn sure, thinking we've got the world on a string. If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we'd never leave our bedrooms.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Way, Thinking

“There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Love

“Because of you, the world makes sense to me in a way it didn't before. I have a place now, with you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Way, Sense

“My son, what you are attempting – shadow-travel across the world, carrying the statue of Athena – it may well destroy you.’
‘Thanks for the encouragement.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Travel

“Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Time

“Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

Home

“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Source: Nature

Nature, Parting

“He wanted to believe that his own lack of movement had stopped all movement in the world, the way a hibernating frog abolishes winter.”

Kóbó Abe book The Woman in the Dunes

Part 1, Ch. 8
Source: The Woman in the Dunes (1962)

Way, Winter

“The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

“Nobody home but She for Whom I Am the World. Can't go on like this, can't keep doing it.- Jericho Barrons”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Home

“The problem with telling people that they can do anything they want to do is that it is objectively, factually inaccurate. Otherwise the whole world would just be ballet dancers and pop stars.”

David Nicholls book Us

Source: Us

People, Star, Problem

“When I can make
Of ten small words a rope to hang the world!
"I had you and I have you now no more.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Renascence and Other Poems

“This girl (Stephanie) is but a few months away from her seventeenth birthday and already she has saved the world and killed a god. What have you done?”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

God, Girl, Birthday

“The moon is so beautiful. It's a big silver dollar, flipped by God. And it landed scarred side up, see? So He made the world.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

Source: Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth

God, Beauty

“A lot of people seem nice when you first meet them. Then later you find out that they are evil villains who plan to take over the world.”

Dan Gutman (1954) American children's writer

Source: Miss Daisy Is Crazy!

People, Evil

“the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Life, Death, Hate, Religion

“Who are you?" he asked.
I am the future queen of this world, at the very least. You may refer to me as Mistress Koboi for the next five minutes. After that you may refer to me as Aaaaarrrrgh, hold your throat, die screaming, and so on.”

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

Source: The Time Paradox

Future

“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

Communication

“And starward drifts the stricken world,
Lone in unalterable gloom
Dead, with a universe for tomb,
Dark, and to vaster darkness whirled.
(“The Testimony of the Suns”)”

George Sterling (1869–1926) American poet and playwright

Source: The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

Universe, Sun, Dead

“When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Time

“And the walls became the world all around.”

Maurice Sendak book Where the Wild Things Are

Source: Where the Wild Things Are

“The world isn't a sad place, it's just big.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Sadness

“Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Mountain, Silence

“The world is a story we tell ourselves about the world.”

Vikram Chandra (1961) Indian writer

“the psyche has been burned
and left us senseless,
the world has been darker than lights-out
in a closet full of hungry bats,
and the whiskey and wine entered our veins
when blood was too weak to carry on”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Light, Wine

“the joy of someone who had been a reader all her life, whose world had been immeasurably enlarged by the words of others.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: How Reading Changed My Life

Life, Joy

“Mother Dear, one day I'm going to turn this world upside down."

--From My Brother Martin, by Christine King Farris”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

“In a mad world it always seems simpler to obey.”

Graham Greene book Our Man in Havana

Our Man in Havana (1958)

Madness

“Remake the wild, a little at a time, each in your own corner of the world. You cannot wait for anyone else, even a god, to do that for you.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

God, Time, Waiting

“My pet, the world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business" - Rhett Butler”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

People, Forgiveness, Business

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Life, Truth

“… nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.”

Barbara Kingsolver book The Lacuna

Source: The Lacuna

“The world isn't fair? What a huge revelation! Some people in power abuse those they have power over? Amazing! When did this start happening?”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

People

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Soul, Learning, Water, Heart

“… the kind of love that can burn down the world or raise it up in glory…”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love

“This world belongs to the energetic.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Resources <br class="br">1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)

“Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Marriage, Indifference

“I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.”

Jonathan Lethem You Don't Love Me Yet

Source: You Don't Love Me Yet

Parting

“Dear me! If only men and women would trust, understand and help as my children do, what a capital place `the world would be!”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Women, Men, Children, Understanding

“You're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Sense, Waiting

“The world rests upon a turtle, which itself stands on the back of an elephant!”
Alek tried not to laugh. “Then what does the elephant stand on, madam?”
“Don’t try to be clever, young man.” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s elephants all the way down!”

Scott Westerfeld book Behemoth

Source: Behemoth

Way

“If we develop in-depth knowledge it will enable us to give our best to others and help to make a better world.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 152
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
Context: THINK BIG means opening our horizons, reaching for new possibilities in our lives, being open to whatever God has in store for us on the road ahead.
T=TALENT : If you recognize your talents, use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, you will rise to the top of your field.
H=HONEST : If we live by the rule of honesty and accept our problems, we can go far down the road of achievement.
I=INSIGHT : If we observe and reflect and commit ourselves to giving our best, we will come out on top.
N=NICE : If we are nice to others, other respond to us in the same way, and we can give our best for each other.
K=KNOWLEDGE : If we make every attempt to increase our knowledge in order to use it for human go, it will make a difference in us and in our world.
B=BOOKS : If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world.
I=IN-DEPTH LEARNING : If we develop in-depth knowledge, it will enable us to give our best to others and help to make a better world.
G=GOD : If we acknowledge our need for God, he will help us.

Knowledge, Help

“I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Dreams

“Some split between the inner world and outer world is common to all behaviour, and the need to bridge the gap is the source of creative behaviour.”

Anthony Storr (1920–2001) English psychiatrist

“No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Money, People

“Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two.”

Neal Shusterman book Everwild

Source: Everwild

Loss

“Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Variant: Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.

Lie, Music, Change

“If you let the world in, you open yourself up to the world. Even if the world doesn't know that you're there.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“I pulled him closer to me, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him just as desperately as he was kissing me. Like if we could just love long enough and hard enough and deep enough, then the world outside would never, could never hurt us.”

Malorie Blackman Noughts & Crosses

Source: Noughts & Crosses

Love, Kiss, Hurt

“I whispered “I’m not,” even though I was. Not scared of him, but scared of everything I felt. Sometimes it was too much. What I felt for him was bigger than the world, than anything.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

Loss

“Ever since that happened to me, I haven't been able to give myself to anyone in this world.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Happiness, Secret, Forgetting

“It’s only when you’ve lost someone that you realize the nonsense of that
phrase “It’s a small world”. It isn’t. It’s a vast, devouring world, especially if you’re alone.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Source: Books of Blood: Volume Two

“Boughton says he has more ideas about heaven every day. He said, "Mainly I just think about the splendors of the world and multiply by two. I'd multiply by ten or twelve if I had the energy.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Idea, Thinking

“Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you're any wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Variant: Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

“A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,’ said he. ‘Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.”

Rafael Sabatini book Captain Blood

Source: Captain Blood

Madness

“I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Sula (1973)

Color, Country

“The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all "knowledge" is structural.”

Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) Polish scientist and philosopher

Source: Science and Sanity (1933), p. 20.
Context: The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all "knowledge" is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system.

Knowledge

“I hopehaven't given up on the S. Q.'s of the world, Reynie. As you see, there are a great many sheep in wolves' clothing. If not for S. Q.'s good nature, we'd never have escaped.”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

Nature, Clothes

Quotes about the world page 65

Quotes about the world
page 65