Quotes about the world
page 66
“We're making it up. The world, the universe, life, reality. Especially reality.”
“If you walk across my camera I will flash the world your story.”
“I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses.”
Source: Towards Another Summer
“Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.”
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
“The most boring thing in the entire world is nudity. The second most boring thing is honesty.”
Source: Invisible Monsters
Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones, wife of the artist Edward Burne-Jones (1875)
Episode 1, Opening introduction voice-over
The Power of Myth (1988)
'Notes On Journalism' http://books.google.com/books?id=52L2eI9mwlcC&q="No+one+in+this+world+so+far+as+I+know+and+I+have+searched+the+record+for+years+and+employed+agents+to+help+me+has+ever+lost+money+by+underestimating+the+intelligence+of+the+great+masses+of+the+plain+people"&pg=PA28#v=onepage in the Chicago Tribune ( 19 September 1926 http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1926/09/19/page/87/article/notes-on-journalism)
The first sentence is often paraphrased as "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." (The Yale Book of Quotations, 2006, p. 512)
1920s
Source: Gist of Mencken
Source: On Beauty
The Conundrum of the Workshops, Stanza 1 (1890).
Other works
Source: The Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses
Context: When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It's pretty, but is it Art?”
“The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.”
Source: English Music
Source: A Coney Island of the Mind
“When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.”
February 1954 The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5 as quoted in Woman as Writer (1978) by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, p. 38
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it. He hopes to impose his particular vision and share it with others. And when the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely. We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it. When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.
Source: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Source: Nancy's Mysterious Letter
“I do not want to pass the time. I want to grab hold of it and leave my mark upon the world.”
Source: The Sweet Far Thing
“Entropy shakes its angry fist at you for being clever enough to organize the world. (p 2)”
Source: Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia
“The world is made by the people who show up for the job.”
Source: CryoBurn
“The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.”
“The thing about changing the world… Once you do it, the world's all different.”
Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home
“Here, for whatever reason, is the world. And here it stays. With me on it.”
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Journal entry (1938), quoted in the Introduction to a 1994 edition of Of Mice and Men by Susan Shillinglaw, p. vii
Context: In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.
Source: Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia
“Awake, arise, and assert yourself, you dreamers of the world. Your star is now in ascendancy.”
Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
Source: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
Variant: There is no one alive who
is Youer than You!
Source: Happy Birthday to You!
Source: So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
“I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.”
Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Source: Middlesex
Source: Collected Poems
“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.”
Source: The Big Sleep
Source: The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great
Oprah.com http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Life-Lessons-We-All-Need-to-Learn-Brene-Brown#ixzz28s3kPWdP
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Context: Belonging is not fitting in... Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect. When we don't have that, we shape-shift and turn into chameleons; we hustle for the worthiness we already possess.
“Another of these strong silent men. The world is full of us.”
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Source: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory
No. 19, st. 2.
Source: More Poems http://www.kalliope.org/vaerktoc.pl?vid=housman/1936 (1936)
1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime — the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
“Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.”
Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things
Attributed in The National elementary principal https://books.google.com/books?id=T8YVAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Then+will+our+world+know+the+blessings+of+peace.%22&dq=%22Then+will+our+world+know+the+blessings+of+peace.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1iNCMvcHLAhUMcz4KHXvcCt84MhDoAQgfMAE (1948) - Volume 28 - Page 34; a similar statement has also become attributed to Jimi Hendrix: "When the power of love overcomes love of power the world will know peace." A similar quotation is found in My Heart Shall Give A Oneness-Feast (1993) by Sri Chinmoy: "My books, they all have only one message: the heart's Power Of Love must replace the mind's Love Of Power. If I have the Power Of Love, then I shall claim the whole World as my own … World Peace can be achieved when the Power Of Love replaces the Love Of Power." An even earlier statement of Chinmoy is found in Meditations: Food For The Soul (1970): "When the power of love replaces the love of power, man will have a new name: God."
Disputed
Variant: We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”
The Conduct of Life, Chapter 6, “Worship,” p. 214
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)
Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Source: All the Light We Cannot See
Source: The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
“When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.”
Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 31
Context: I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.