c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it and run.The guy who said that was a wise man. He knew what most men don't - Women are powerful creatures who should be handled with care, or they can become very, very dangerous.
— Christina Dodd
We crave magic because we are magic. We crave power because we are pure power.
— Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness
...it is not enough to be freeof the whips, principalities and powers
— Edward Kamau Brathwaite, The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy
I am a lawyer, and for me it is very sad to say that there is now law here. There are weapons rather than law. What did Mao say? Power comes out of the barrel of a gun. It's very true. The situation is decadent. A lot of Serbs think this is leading us nowhere but they feel powerless. How many disagree? I don't know. Perhaps thirty percent disagree, but most of them are frightened and quiet. Perhaps sixty percent agree or are confused enough to go along. They are led by the ten percent who have the guns and who have control of the television towers. That's all they need.'p. 107
— Peter Maass, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War
And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned their faces away and said, 'Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world. Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage. The soul lives on humility and patience,' at the same time screwing the poor from their last centime. They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said, 'Suffer. Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God.'And anyone believes what they hear over and over again, so the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding, scourged, and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness. And the priests said, 'Raise your hands to heaven and bend your knees and bear your suffering without complaint. Pray for those that torture you, for prayer and blessing are the only stairways which you can climb to paradise.'And so they chained down the poor in their ignorance so that they wouldn't stand up and fight their bosses who ruled in the name of the lie of divine right.
— Peter Weiss, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade
For power, you know, is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight.
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
You want to know who the strongest man in the Kabuki District is? You must be new in town. You won't last long with that attitude. Forget it. This town is on a whole different level. You got thugs, brawlers, vigilantes and rogue warriors from all over Edo here. It's like a haven for hooligans. This is for your own good. Have a drink and go back to the countryside. What's that? You want me to tell you about the top dogs before you go? You really like this stuff. First, there are four monsters on a level of their own: The Fierce and Divine Madamoiselle Saigo, Doromizu Jirocho the Gallant, Peacock Princess Kada and Empress Otose. The four factions are in a standoff which preserves a fragile balance of power. Who would be the strongest in a fight? You wouldn't be able to even scratch those beasts. Saigo and Jirocho in particular, were heroes during the Joui War. Well, they're too old to go on a tear now. If you want someone who's currently active, there's Katsuro Kuroguma, a young leader in the Doromizu Faction. He's the most feared man in Kabuki District right now. You'll also find a few former Joui in Saigo's Faction. There are rumours about Kada's Faction having ties to some crazy folk. Otose's Faction? It's just a bar, really. She's just an old lady with a soft heart. But if you try any funny business on her turf, you'll run into a certain guy. A guy who holds his own against the Big Three by himself. One hell of a monster, with hair that's completely white. A demon...
— Hideaki Sorachi
I knew how one climbing the mountain of worldly success can slip down into the river below without being conscious of the descent till he is already drowning.
— Diego Rivera, My Art, My Life
The simple act of putting your truth on paper, only you and your thoughts, is one of the most powerful exercises you can do.
— Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth
It is their usual reaction; they employ not words and reasoned conversation or discourse to resolve problems, but the truncheon, the jackbooted foot, or the gun. Sophistication requires more competence and skill than mere thuggery. It is a harder, loftier charge to be civilised than to let the beast in man devour man. The enlightened mind knows that all is challengeable, questions all, and thus, learns and grows. The weak, narrow mind makes its beliefs – whatever form they take – sacrosanct, defending them with violence if necessary. Political extremists, much like religious zealots, are the latter. They destroy what they cannot convert. They annihilate those they cannot control or make conform. They have found no peace in life, no love, and so promote war and division, as emotional cripples – inflicting their own pain and misery and malignant stupidity on the world. Their language binds people together, but only by stirring the darkest excesses of the soul; language of hate, and intolerance, fear and conspiracy, and the need for vengeance. In war-scarred Europe, these cripples direct mass-psychology, and would make the world in their own likeness; mutilated by violence and tribalism and hate.They use language in its most evil, twisted form. They appeal to the lowest form of understanding, on a level I hesitate to allow for the term ‘human intelligence’ to be associated.Children, fertile minds ripe for molestation. Now they will be taught what to think, not how to think. Language, that twisted poison. It scars purity.
— Daniel S. Fletcher, Jackboot Britain
We must look to God for His grace and His power to perfect godly qualities in our lives.
— Elizabeth George, A Woman's High Calling
Leadership is the ability to make things happen.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
Power is a delicate thing. The most powerful storms on earth intensify rapidly, but dissipate just as fast if not faster.
— Anonymous
The power of language – it can heal and build, or corrupt, poison, destroy, desecrate, annihilate…
— Daniel S. Fletcher, Jackboot Britain
They'd taken everything. Everything, and people simply had let them. People had meekly surrendered the world to them in hopes those CEOs would finally have enough, finally have reason to leave them be. But Tom knew better.
— S.J. Kincaid
The only thing more dangerous then your enemy knowing how powerful you are, is your enemy not knowing how powerful you are.
— Joshua Teya
From the beginning, Europe assumed the power to make decisions within the international trading system. An excellent illustration of that is the fact that the so-called international law which governed the conduct of nations on the high seas was nothing else but European law. Africans did not participate in its making, and in many instances, African people were simply the victims, for the law recognized them only as transportable merchandise. If the African slave was thrown overboard at sea, the only legal problem that arose was whether or not the slave ship could claim compensation from the insurers! Above all, European decision-making power was exercised in selecting what Africa should export – in accordance with European needs. Pg. 77
— Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
— Roald Dahl
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
— Mark Twain
Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.
— Marilyn Monroe
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
— Oscar Wilde
The real world is where the monsters are.
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
— Bertrand Russell
Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
— John Donne, The Poems of John Donne; Miscellaneous Poems (Songs and Sonnets) Elegies. Epithalamions, or Marriage Songs. Satires. Epigrams. the Progress of
It's a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful.
— Hiromu Arakawa
The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no?Doesn't that make life a story?
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,For I would ride with you upon the wind,Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,And dance upon the mountains like a flame.
— W.B. Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire
But if you tame me, then weshall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, Ishall be unique in all the world.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.
— Walt Disney Company
All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.""Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence."I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
When she awoke, the world was on fire.
— Scott Westerfeld, Uglies
There's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place.
— Banksy
Besides the alternate universe offered by a book, the quiet space of a museum was my favorite place to go. My mom said I was an escapist at heart . . . that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one. It’s true that I’ve always been able to yank myself out of this world and plunge myself into another.
— Amy Plum, Die for Me
You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there's still going to be somebody who hates peaches.
— Dita Von Teese
Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia
I don't need to kill goats to say things. I CAN talk.
— L.J. Smith, Daughters of Darkness
But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.
— Voltaire, Candide
They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked higher than the pyramids; they had killed themselves over the failure to find a love none of us could ever be. In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.
— Jeanette Winterson
Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Hello, Max," he said quietly, searching my face. "How do you feel?"Which was a ten on the "imbecilic question" scale of one to ten. Why, I feel fine, Jeb," I said brightly. "How about you?"Any nausea? Headache?" Yep. And it's standing here talking to me.
— James Patterson
That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.
— Lev Grossman, The Magician King
You may think I’m small, but I have a universe inside my mind.
— Yoko Ono
You can either be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It all depends on how you view your life.
— Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
We sat in the car & the night droppeddown until the only sounds werethe crickets &the dance of our voices& for a momentthe world becamesmall enough toroll back & forth between us.
— Brian Andreas, Hearing Voices - Volume 5: Collected Stories and Drawings
Everyone's moving on without me, into a world I don't understand.
— Sophie Kinsella, Confessions of a Shopaholic
You're too good for this world, and because of that the world will eventually crush you.
— Paul Auster, Invisible
Glory: I look around at this world you're so eager to be a part of and all I see is six billion lunatics looking for the fastest ride out. Who's not crazy? Look around, everyone's drinking, smoking, shooting up, shooting each other, or just plain screwing their brains out 'cause they don't want 'em anymore. I'm crazy? Honey, I'm the original one-eyed chicklet in the kingdom of the blind, 'cause at least I admit the world makes me nuts.
— Douglas Petrie
We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
You have to find what sparks a light in you so that you in your own way can illuminate the world.
— Oprah Winfrey
Sometimes I get so caught up in my own problems that I forget how amazing the world is.
— Wendelin Van Draanen, Runaway
Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
I smiled back and I thoughthow incredible that was, that they would find the time to smile. There was goodness in the world still, even if you couldn’t always see it.
— Jenny Valentine, Broken Soup
When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.
— Terry Goodkind, The Pillars of Creation
But I believe I rather like superstitious people. They lend color to life. Wouldn't it be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible . . . and good? What would we find to talk about?
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars
I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.
— Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.
— Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Ellen had said that her mother was afraid of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big. The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel. 
— Lois Lowry, Number the Stars
One must be cunning and wicked in this world.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Listen closely... the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been going on, and will go on and on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it.
— Jack Kerouac
Her two worlds, two lives that she tried so hard to keep separate, were crashing together. And she felt helpless to stop it.
— Aprilynne Pike, Spells
You are very harsh.''I have seen the world.
— Voltaire, Candide
That's the trouble with having the whole world love you. One day, you wake up and it's flirting with your best friend instead. And you don't know what to do. You're thrown.
— Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan
There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.
— Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
There's not much you need to know about the world. Except how to use a sword and trust very few.
— Melina Marchetta, Froi of the Exiles
In the land where excellence is commended, not envied, where weakness is aided, not mocked, there is no question as to how its inhabitants are all superhuman.
— Criss Jami, Venus in Arms
A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not e
— Alexander the Great
There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.
— Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
A voice within me is sobbing, "You see that's what's become of you. You're surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don't listen to the advice of your own better half." Believe me, I'd like to listen, but it doesn't work, because if I'm quiet and serious, everyone thinks I'm putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I'm not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and setatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can't keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, an finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if . . . if only there were no other people in the world.Yours, Anne M. Frank.
— Anne Frank
You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good. Without you, my life would still exist, but that's all it would manage to do.
— Kiera Cass, The One
And for once a band of thieves in ripped up jeans got to rule the world
— Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift: Speak Now
If I’d been someone else in a different world I’d've done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
How To Be An Explorer Of The World1. Always Be LOOKING (notice the ground beneath your feet.)2. Consider Everything Alive & Animate3. EVERYTHING Is Interesting. Look Closer.4. Alter Your Course Often.5. Observe For Long Durations (and short ones).6. Notice The Stories Going On Around You.7. Notice PATTERNS. Make CONNECTIONS.8. DOCUMENT Your Findings (field notes) In A VAriety Of Ways.9. Incorporate Indeterminacy.10. Observe Movement.11. Create a Personal DIALOGUE With Your Environment. Talk to it.12. Trace Things Back to Their ORIGINS.13. Use ALL of the Senses In Your Investigations.
— Keri Smith, How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum
I'm not always sincere. One can't be in this world, you know.
— Greta Garbo
Apparently, the world is not a wish-granting factory.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
My feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world.
— Dejan Stojanovic
It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.
— Lev Grossman
It's a noir world. Unfair things happen.
— Rob Thomas
It's not a pretty world, Papa.''I've noticed,' my father said softly.
— Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev
There was a skyness to the sky and a nowness to the world that he had never seen or felt or realized before.
— Neil Gaiman, Stardust
If you believe in the idea of true friends, then your heart is vulnerable to betrayal.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
The world is such a marvel-it gave you trials, but if you were still and concentrated, if you tried to do the right thing, it always provided you with salvation.
— Anna Godbersen, Envy
One summer night I fell asleep hoping the world would be different when I woke. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, the world was the same.
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
The world turned itself into a better place around him.
— Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
Be a lover of the world, it is the only way to survive in it.
— Janosch
This world has need of song and sword.
— Patricia Briggs, Dragon Bones
Parents have a child, and in doing so they bring into the world a monster that kills everything it comes in contact with.
— Thomas Bernhard, Concrete
We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves and wiser people so full of doubt.
— Leah Wilson, The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy
I'm very down to Earth, I'm just not from this Earth.
— Karl Lagerfeld
Strange world isn't it?
— Stephenie Meyer, The Host
All the statistics in the world can't measure the warmth of a smile.
— Chris Hart
The world is larger and more beautiful than my little struggle.
— Ravi Zacharias, Recapture the Wonder
There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Hateful bitch of a world, it wouldn't ever last.
— Jack Kerouac, Book of Sketches
The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.
— Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest
There will Be a Moment when Your eyes meet, and everything in the world will be simple again.
— Michael Edwards
The choice we face is not, as many imagine, between heaven and hell. Rather, the choice is between heaven and this world. Even a fool would exchange hell for heaven; but only the wise will exchange this world for heaven.
— Dave Hunt, An Urgent Call To A Serious Faith
If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy
— Milan Kundera, Immortality
The world can ask you to participate, but it's a day-today decision if you want to agree to that proposal.
— Aimee Bender, An Invisible Sign of My Own
The world needs more love at first sight.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
We had a kettle
—  we let it leak:Our not repairing made it worse.We haven't had any tea for a week...The bottom is out of the Universe.
Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
— Thornton Wilder, Our Town
There's a hole in the world like a big black pit who are filled with people who are filled with shit.
— Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
The ultimate act of bravery does not take place on a battlefield. It takes place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations and yes, your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world.
— Anna Quindlen
Being a one of a kind means we are automatically the best in the world at what we do.
— Victor WIlliamson
There is but one world and everything that is imaginable is necessary to it. For this world also which seems to us a thing of stone and flower and blood is not a thing at all but is a tale. And all in it is a tale and each tale the sum of all lesser tales and yet these are also the selfsame tale and contain as well all else within them. So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made. We have no way to know what could be taken away. What omitted. We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall. And those seams that are hid from us are of course in the tale itself and the tale has no abode or place of beind except in the telling only and there it lives and makes its home and therefore we can never be done with the telling. Of the telling there is no end. And . . . in whatever . . . place by whatever . . . name or by no name at all . . . all tales are one. Rightly heard all tales are one.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
Fuck the world and never tell them I love you.
— M.F. Moonzajer
No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality.
— Wendell Berry
The world is indeed a better place when there is love, friendship, acceptance and hope. Powered by these you can indeed overcome anything including destiny.
— Preeti Shenoy, Life is What You Make It: A Story of Love, Hope and How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny
And that’s how it is in this world, boy. Start a tale, just a little tale that should fade and die—take your eye off it for just a moment and when you turn back it’s grown big enough to grab you up in its teeth and shake you. That’s how it is. All our lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce.
— Mark  Lawrence, Prince of Fools
Are we not all flung into the world for no other purpose than to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and one another?
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
There were moments when it honestly seemed as if the world were conspiring against her.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Choice
You are aware of only one unrest;Oh, never learn to know the other!Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,And one is striving to forsake its brother.Unto the world in grossly loving zest,With clinging tendrils, one adheres;The other rises forcibly in questOf rarefied ancestral spheres.If there be spirits in the airThat hold their sway between the earth and sky,Descend out of the golden vapors thereAnd sweep me into iridescent life.Oh, came a magic cloak into my handsTo carry me to distant lands,I should not trade it for the choicest gown,Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: First Part
I am a star in the firmamentthat observe the world, despises the worldand consumed in its heat.I am the sea by night in a stormthe sea shouting that accumulates new sinsand to the ancient makes recompense.I am exiled from your worldof pride polite, by pride defrauded,I am the king without crown.I am the passion without wordswithout stones of the hearth, without weapons in the war,is my same force that make me sick
— Hermann Hesse
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
In this world of ours, the sparrow must live like a hawk if he is to fly at all.
— Hayao Miyazaki
In the moral realm, there is very little consensus left in Western countries over the proper basis of moral behavior. And because of the power of the media, for millions of men and women the only venue where moral questions are discussed and weighed is the talk show, where more often than not the primary aim is to entertain, even shock, not to think. When Geraldo and Oprah become the arbiters of public morality, when the opinion of the latest media personality is sought on everything from abortion to transvestites, when banality is mistaken for profundity because [it's] uttered by a movie star or a basketball player, it is not surprising that there is less thought than hype. Oprah shapes more of the nation's grasp of right and wrong than most of the pulpits in the land. Personal and social ethics have been removed from the realms of truth and structures of thoughts; they have not only been relativized, but they have been democratized and trivialized.
— D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism
As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.
— Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor
The world, dear Agnes, is a strange affair.
— Molière
There is one thing that has disappeared, not just from the U.S. but from the entire world, is the idea of ever being embarrassed by anything.
— Fran Lebowitz
The world is drowning in weirdness and lies......and here we are, so used to it that we're actually bored!
— Inio Asano, Solanin
I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world. 
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Try not to change the world. You will fail. Try to love the world. Lo, the world is changed. Changed forever.
— Sri Chinmoy
The flesh is at the heart of the world.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible
You're - psychotic. There's something wrong with you.""I know," Benteley agreed. "I'm a sick man. And the more I see, the sicker I get. I'm so sick I think everybody else is sick and I'm the only healthy person. That's pretty bad off, isn't it?
— Philip K. Dick, Solar Lottery
Above all, consider this: The greatest gift we can give ourselves, our children, and our world is to live well and love well.
— Alexandra Katehakis, Erotic Intelligence: Igniting Hot, Healthy Sex While in Recovery from Sex Addiction
If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle. 
— Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
Tell them I came, and no one answered,That I kept my word," he said.Never the least stir made the listeners,Though every word he spakeFell echoing through the shadowiness of the still houseFrom the one man left awake:Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,And the sound of iron on stone,And how the silence surged softly backward,When the plunging hoofs were gone.
— Walter de la Mare, The Listeners and Other Poems
Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
— Alan W. Watts
When you live in love and light, you will not go unseen; ignite the world with every flame of your being.
— Alexandra Elle, Words from a Wanderer
Every thing in this world exist to wear you down
— Tite Kubo, Bleach, Volume 21
The world needs more anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough.
— Bede Jarrett
You show the world as a complete, unbroken chain, an eternal chain, linked together by cause and effect.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made you think it just might be possible to get a handle on this old world after all.
— Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses
World is so beautiful, but alas! There are so many assholes.
— M.F. Moonzajer
And as men believe, so their world goes." - Merlin
— Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
Lizzie Bright Griffin, do you ever wish the world would just go ahead and swallow you whole?""Sometimes I do," she said, and then smiled. "but sometimes I figure I should just go ahead and swallow it.
— Gary D. Schmidt, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
A world without pain, loss, betrayal, hate, death, loneliness? Impossible!
— Darren Shan, The Thin Executioner
I was just teasing," I say. "I myself don't like to eat plain butter, but hey, it's a free world.
— Lauren Myracle, Bliss
The desert and the ocean are realms of desolation on the surface.The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust.The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being.Inside out and outside in. These are worlds of things that implode or explode, and the only catalyst that determines the direction of eco-movement is the balance of water.Both worlds are deceptive, dangerous. Both, seething with hidden life.The only veil that stands between perception of what is underneath the desolate surface is your courage.Dare to breach the surface and sink.
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
I guess the whole world is made up of things coming together and things falling apart,
— Emily Wing Smith, Back When You Were Easier to Love
Sometimes it takes a lowly, title-less man to humble the world. Kings, rulers, CEOs, judges, doctors, pastors, they are already expected to be greater and wiser.
— Criss Jami, Venus in Arms
The world is a contradiction
—  the universe a paradox.
The dawn of beauty always comes after night.
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Keep all your promises, don't take what doesn't belong to you, and always look after those less fortunate than yourself, and you'll do well in the world.
— Rebecca Rupp, The Dragon of Lonely Island
The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book.
— Stéphane Mallarmé
Your purpose...should always be to know...the whole that was intended to be known.
— Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed
When you become a father, it changes you." Snorri spoke towards the fire’s glow. "You see the world in new ways. Those who are not changed were not properly men to begin with.
— Mark  Lawrence, Prince of Fools
...and my eyes no longer gaze the same on the face of the world.
— Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak
A step lower and strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is "dense", sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millenia.
— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
I know I'll never marry, never risk bringing a child into the world. Because if there's one thing being a victor doesn't guarantee, it's our children's safety. My kids' names would go right into the reaping balls with everyone else's. And I swear I'll never let that happen.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Once, this whole world had been hidden beneath a shallow sea.
— Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter
It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it-just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.
— Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
There’s something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is, and how far apart we all are. The stars look like they’re so close, you could reach out and touch them. But you can’t. Sometimes things look a lot closer than they are.
— Kami Garcia, Beautiful Darkness
Far, far below the deepest delvings of the dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
The world is always open, Waiting to be discovered.
— Dejan Stojanovic, Circling: 1978-1987
I’m all you have in this world Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You ARE nothing!
— Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.
— Pliny the Elder
Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it's caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty
When the world changes, it stashes us away where we can't make it run the other way again.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Pale sky, white land; like somewhere past the end of the world
— Rinsai Rossetti
With what can we feed the soul in the world of emptiness other than with prayer?
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
I suppose it had something to do with it being a secret, just how much it had meant to me. Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that--little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings. But the very fact that we had such needs would have felt wrong to us at the time--like somehow we were letting the side down.
— Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Make sure you don't carry the burden of the whole world on your shoulders, just in case someone needed them to cry.
— Nema Al-Araby
Life is no different than the weather. Not only is it unpredictable, but it shows us a new perspective of the world every day.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Love the world. Otherwise, you will be forced to carry the heaviest load: your own bitter self.
— Sri Chinmoy
It's not me but the world that's deranged.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
You’ve seen the world, and all you’ve seen is nothing; and everything, as well, that you have said and heard is nothing. You’ve sprinted everywhere between here and the horizon; it is nothing. And all the possessions you’ve treasured up at home are nothing.
— Omar Khayyám, Quatrains - Ballades
The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
— William Hazlitt
It was strange how loud the world was when you weren't filling it up with your own noise.
— Bridget Asher, The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted
Now isn´t the time to change yourself to fit into the world... you should be changing the world to accept you. To let you exist as you are, without being cut open and damaged.
— Alexandra Bracken, In The Afterlight
I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
The world is'nt such a bad place at all - as long as one did'nt read the daily newspaper
— Bill Aitken
The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, But now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff.
— Stevie Smith, Selected Poems
The Women of Our World are like Mother Earth. They don't just give life to the next generation but also to Hope. The Women of Our World are to be loved, respected and protected.
— Avijeet Das
Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitues, every one known to the others.
— Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man
He'd solved the problem you see—and that's the way some people are. They are ceaselessly finding ways of getting to grips with the world, of surmounting certain antipathies so as to apply themselves to it that little bit more. It's quite admirable really, how they refuse to let anything come between them and the rest of it—Oh, the rest of it! Sort of there, sort of hovering there all the time. Different ideas come to me now and again—strategies I suppose that might inculcate a little more compatibility. I just don't know if I'll ever get the hang of it if you want to know—as a matter of fact I think I've left it a little too late to cultivate the necessary outlook.
— Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond
You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants some magical solution to their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic.
— Lewis Carroll
This world has only two kinds of people: villains and smiling villains.
— Brent Weeks, The Broken Eye
In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be--and thus the world is merely composed of actors.
— François de La Rochefoucauld
I am fond of reminding my yoga students of the saying “It takes one to know one” when they become lost I condemnation and judgment of others. The world that we perceive is a reflection of our own states of mind and reveals our own level of consciousness. The world is little more than a Rorschach blot in which we see our own desire systems projected. We see what we want to see. (116)
— Prem Prakash, The Yoga of Spiritual Devotion A Modern Translation of the Narada Bhakti Sutras
The world is not growing worse and it is not growing better -- it is just turning around as usual.
— Finley Peter Dunne
Eric understands that the world is rarely the way it is supposed to be. And he knows that, given the chance, we don't have to wait for someone to make messes of our lives. We do a good enough job, ourselves.
— Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts
Blessed with so many resources within myself the world was not necessary to me. I could do very well without it.
— Jane Austen, Emma
Don't pity this sinful world!Just pity those who made it so!
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
...it will be a world made not bright but brighter, not clean but cleaner.
— Dean Koontz, Dead and Alive
Not by blaming the world, not by shunning the world, but only be loving the world can I have peace of mind
— Sri Chinmoy
There is no way I can avoid thinking about the kind of world I belong to. The abuse of utopias disfigures everything.
— Floriano Martins
The world encyclopedia, the universal library, exists, and it is the world itself.
— Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
Where does the world’s zephyr strike from the view which let you to live the eternal moment of love other than in the Divine Light of sight?
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
There is only one world the world pressing against you this minute.
— Storm Jameson
A long time ago people believed that the world is flat and the moon is made of green cheese. Some still do, to this day. The man on the moon is looking down and laughing.
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
— William Hazlitt
In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
— Alan W. Watts
Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn't get to have.
— Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting
Don’t you dare come into my world and tell me what color the ocean is! It’s black. Black as midnight. Black and awful!
— Nadia Scrieva
...The world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.
— Sue Monk Kidd
Here is the world, and you live in it, and are grateful. You try to be grateful.
— Michael Cunningham, The Hours
It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all to soon, the very words "justice," "compassion," "society," "struggle," "evil," would be unheard echoes on an empty air.
— P.D. James, The Children of Men
I loved you, you know... It's not my fault the world is what it is.
— Ed Brubaker, Fatale, Book One: Death Chases Me
It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side - just like I want the words. I want my words to build bridges strong enough to walk on. I want them to tower over the world so I can stand up on them and walk to the other side.
— Markus Zusak, Getting the Girl
A brilliant idea is like a baby in a mothers womb.You need to bring it out in the world, nurture it, feed it, grow it, till it becomes big enough to take care of itself.If you leave it at the stage of an idea itself, it is as good as non existent.
— Manoj Arora, From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom
You got the eggs in you
—  the world is fully ready to celebrate the chicks out of your laying labour. Never give up. Go and breed! Go and breed great dreams.
We will all have an end to this journey one day, some will have a great ending some will have it bad, but it’s the journey that they take that matters, in the end.
— Zakariyya Sheikh
It was a brave old world.
— Mark A. Rayner, The Fridgularity
This dwarf still observes the world from his own self-imposed height.
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
It's love that makes the world go round - otherwise it would be flat.
— Jay Woodman
... I felt something and vowed that if I ever got a girl I would treat her right and never be bad or dirty to her or hurt her, ever. I vowed it and had all the confidence in the world that I would keep the vow.
— Markus Zusak, Underdog
That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as a dictator of Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in his ear? Or if a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, you appreciate. Yet, in the final analysis, just as irresistible as a tritium bomb.
— Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End
If you follow your passion, the world will follow yours…
— Vishwas Mudagal, Losing My Religion
The fever, I realized, had gone. Beneath my feet, the hardwood floor felt cool on my feet, the air gentle against my itching legs. This was just the world, after all. Big, thoroughly mapped place to sell joy or buy it, hunt company or flee it, trust yourself or your friends or your instincts, stretch the hours as much as you could, and one day vanish. ("Safety Clowns")
— Glen Hirshberg, Best New Horror 16
There is remedy for all things except death - Don Quixote De La Mancha
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
This person has just arrived on this planet, knows nothing about it, has no standards by which to judge it. This person does not care what it becomes. It is eager to become absolutely anything it is supposed to be.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
I have fallen in love with the worldAnd I am aware that I have chosenthe most dangerous lover of them all.
— Rod McKuen
When people divide, things end. Therefore: I won't divide because I don't want this to end.
— Daniel C. Tomas
I set up and staged hundreds of ends-of-the-world and watched, enthralled, as they played themselves out.
— Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters