Quotes about the world
page 67

“My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Source: The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

Justice, Reality

“When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

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.

“In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

"The Ball is Free to Roll"
Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)
Source: Homage To Qwert Yuiop: Essays

“The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

People

“Everything looks different when you're older, not staring up at the world but down upon it.”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer

“Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it."

[Q&A with Larry McCaffery,, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2]”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Way, Summer

“Her beauty belonged to all the world but her flaws belonged to him alone.”

Henry De Montherlant (1895–1972) French writer

Beauty

“Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world you want.”

Anna Lappé (1973) American writer

Money, Time

“The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl.”

Irving Berlin (1888–1989) American composer

“You are educated. Your
certification is in your
degree. You may think of
it as the ticket to the good
life. Let me ask you to think of an
alternative. Think of it as your
ticket to change the world.”

Tom Brokaw (1940) Television journalist

Life, Education, Thinking, Change

“You're mistaken, Father. You were in paradise, but you didn't recognize it. It's the same with most people in this world; they seek suffering in the most joyous of places because they think they are unworthy of happiness.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Happiness, People, Thinking, Suffering

“A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.”

Caroline Gordon (1895–1981) Novelist, literary critic

Books, Way

“Nothing is really lost or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing…
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers
left from early fires,
… shall duly flame again”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Life, Age, Birth

“TELL THE WORLD WHAT YOU INTEND TO DO, BUT FIRST SHOW IT. This is the equivalent of saying "deeds, and not words, are what count most.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

“He wanted to take his love back from her so badly. The old techniques didn’t work anymore. In fact, they’d never worked. How do you stop loving someone? It was one of the world’s more brutal mysteries. The more you tried, the less it worked.”

Ann Brashares (1967) American children's writer

Love

“Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making
trouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: Pygmalion & My Fair Lady

Life, Way

“No person [should] walk out into the world to begin the day until he or she has stood beneath the cross to receive God’s love.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Love, God, Personality

“Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Essays: First Series

Source: Essays: First Series

Books, Housing

“Learning something means coming into contact with a world of which you know nothing. In order to learn, you must be humble.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

Learning

“Settle for what you can get, but first ask for the World.”

Diana Wynne Jones book The Tough Guide To Fantasyland

Source: The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

“But paradise is locked and bolted….
We must make a journey around the world to see if a back door has perhaps been left open.”

Heinrich Von Kleist (1777–1811) German poet, dramatist, novelist and short story writer

Source: On a Theatre of Marionettes

“Most of the bad guys in the real world don't know that they are bad guys. You don't get a flashing warning sign that you're about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren't looking.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

Guy

“I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Feeling

“A very underestimated part of the world, The Entrance is.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: The Piper's Son

Parting

“I do like the world quite a lot.”

Shannon Hale book Book of a Thousand Days

Source: Book of a Thousand Days

“Wanting him to come back before anyone notices part of the world has not moved since he left.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Parting

“This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Beauty

“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours.
In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Love, Heart, Relationship, Good Night

“There are a lot of things in this world to be afraid of, but a dead body isn't one of them.”

Amanda Stevens (1977)

Source: The Restorer

Dead

“Sometimes artist like to catch themselves looking out, let the world see them for once. It's a signature. This one is a very bold one. But this is also a witnessing. We want to remember, and we want to be remembered. That's why we paint.”

Maureen Johnson book 13 Little Blue Envelopes

Source: 13 Little Blue Envelopes

Painting

“I learned a world from each / one whom I loved”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Love, Learning

“And when all the world is overcharged with Inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is Warre, which provideth for every man, by Victory or Death.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Second Part, Chapter 30, p. 181
Leviathan (1651)

Death, Victory

“hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Source: Complete Poems, 1904-1962

Hate, Fear, Universe, Despair

“… do you think God made the world to amuse himself because he was bored? Because if so he would have to be mean.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

God, Thinking

“All the talking in the world couldn't even prove you and the other person both saw the same color red.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Secret Vampire

Color, Personality

“In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still, and absorbed.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

"Still in Melbourne, January 1987"
Source: Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989)
Context: Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace, and wit, reminders of order, calm, and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep, and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still, and absorbed.

Home

“You must do something to make the world more beautiful - Ms. Rumphius”

Barbara Cooney (1917–2000) American writer and illustrator of children's books

Beauty

“You're burned into my mind forever. There is nothing, nothing in this world that will ever change that.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Change

“The world, although well-lighted with fluorescents and incandescent bulbs and neon, is still full of odd dark corners and unsettling nooks and crannies.”

Stephen King book Firestarter

Source: Firestarter

Light

“There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Money, Books

“Something about the way she moves through the world does not lend itself to the care of fragile objects.”

Chelsea Cain (1972) American journalist and writer

Source: Heartsick

Way

“And the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. The more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

People, Imagination

“Doctor Who: You want weapons? We're in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!

(from Tooth and Claw in Season 2)”

Russell T. Davies (1963) Screenwriter, former executive producer of Doctor Who

Books, Season

“There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information

Wisdom, Fools, Understanding, Thinking

“I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Beauty, Thinking, Time

“In this cruel world kindness should always be repaid.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“I think the most important thing in the world is being brave. I'd rathe be brave than beautiful. Hell, I'd settle for acting brave.”

Amy Bloom (1953) Fiction writer, screenwriter, social worker, psychotherapist

Beauty, Hell, Thinking

“The world is full of people who think different is synonymous with wrong.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

People, Thinking

“[He] fell right into the oldest conviction in the world-- that the girl you are in love with can't possibly be anything but true and honest.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Love, Girl

“An ugly, lovely town… crawling, sprawling… by the side of a long and splendid curving shore. This sea-town was my world.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Love, Sea

“There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited.”

Susan Sontag Regarding the Pain of Others

Source: Regarding the Pain of Others

Peace, Memory, Forgetting

“And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

Life, Death, Music, Universe

“If reason ruled the world would history even exist?”

Ryszard Kapuściński (1932–2007) Polish historian

History

“You're probably the most boring teenager in the world.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

“They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People, Way, Suffering, Past

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Social Deterioration
1980s–1990s, Is Reality Optional? (1993)

Education, History, Failure, Past

“A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.”

Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) French writer

Painting

“And I hope she does not live in a dark world. Because even the most terrible loss doesn't have to make you darker; it can make you deeper.”

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.

Hope, Loss

“The world isn’t that easily turned upside down, Haida replied. It’s people who are turned upside down.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

People

“It is not a good fancy,' said the llama. 'What profit to kill men?'
Very little - as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.”

Rudyard Kipling Kim

Source: Kim

Men, Evil

“I'm still prone to periods of isolation, still more fearful of the world out there and more averse to pleasure and risk than I'd like to be; I still direct more energy toward controlling and minimizing appetites than toward indulging them.”

Caroline Knapp (1959–2002) American writer

Source: Appetites: Why Women Want

Pleasure, Fear

“Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Dreams

“The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask… with nothing beneath it?”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Life, Forgetting

“Dawn was breaking, like the light from another world.”

Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) French writer

Source: The Supermale

Light

“Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.”

Jasper Fforde book First Among Sequels

Source: First Among Sequels

Light

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness (1943)

“As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe continues into adulthood.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=IiKY1H0A_QEC&pg=PT102 (Hyperion, 2005). <br class="br">Cf. Wisdom from It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=EEiqMIgAl3UC&pg=PA49 (White Plains, N. Y.: Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 2007), p. 49.

Children, Imagination, Adulthood