World Quotes - Page 12

• How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June… . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!

  Oscar Wilde

  Eye, June, Giving

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 2 (1891)

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• The guy stroked his goatee. "What do you call twenty guys watching the world series?" "The New York Yankees," Butch replied.

  J.R. Ward

  New York, Yankees, Guy

  J.R. Ward (2011). “J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 1-4”, p.452, Penguin

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• Now I’m just standing here on the conveyor. Along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn’t lurch or groan like most of us. Her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her. That she doesn’t lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her.

  Isaac Marion

  Eye, Opposites, Female

  Isaac Marion (2011). “Warm Bodies: A Novel”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

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• But 'why then publish?' There are no rewards Of fame or profit when the world grows weary. I ask in turn why do you play at cards? Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary. It occupies me to turn back regards On what I've seen or pondered, sad or cheery, And what I write I cast upon the stream To swim or sink. I have had at least my dream.

  Lord Byron

  Dream, Writing, Play

  Lord Byron (2015). “Don Juan”, p.420, Xist Publishing

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• I believe that my observations have always led me to find that the so-called realist moves about the world with a closed mind, ringed as it were with concrete and cement, and that the so-called romantic is like an unfenced garden in and out of which truth can wander at will.

  Joseph Roth

  Believe, Moving, Garden

  Joseph Roth (2002). “The Emperor's Tomb”, p.47, The Overlook Press

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• There’s no such thing as `one, true way’; the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself; leave the world better than you found it. Love, freedom, and the chance to do some good — they’re the things worth living and dying for, and if you aren’t willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race.

  Mercedes Lackey

  Race, Dying, Answers

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• Ninety percent of the trouble in this world comes from guys who think they have something to prove.

  Katherine Applegate

  Thinking, Guy, Trouble

  Katherine Applegate (2004). “Ever World: books I & II”

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• No matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a problem into another form. Depending on the nature and the direction of the problem, a solution might be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that solution in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. It served no immediate practical purpose, but it contained a possibility.

  Haruki Murakami

  Real, Cutting, Math

  "Town of Cats" by Haruki Murakami, www.newyorker.com. September 5, 2011.

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• In a world full of danger, to be a potentially seeable object is to be constantly exposed to danger. Self-consciousness, then, may be the apprehensive awareness of oneself as potentially exposed to danger by the simple fact of being visible to others. The obvious defence against such a danger is to make oneself invisible in one way or another.

  R. D. Laing

  Simple, Self, May

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• For my birthday that year Anne gave me an inflatable atlas globe, along with a birthday card in which she wrote: I give you the world. Have fun blowing it up.

  Craig Ferguson

  Fun, Years, Giving

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• I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  People, Feelings, Saying No

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• Harpernus Stoyan, if you can't behave yourself and go and turn all Roman hands and Russian Fingers under that comforter, you're going to have to sit on the couch," Stephanie snapped, sounding for all the world like a stern schoolteacher.

  Lynsay Sands

  Hands, Couches, Fingers

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• Before I tell you my story," Jasper said. "you must understand that there are places in our world, Bella, where the life span of the never-aging is measured in weeks, and not centuries.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Our World, Stories, Aging

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• One tiny Hobbit against all the evil the world could muster. A sane being would have given up, but Samwise burned with a magnificent madness, a glowing obsession to surmount every obstacle, to find Frodo, destroy the Ring, and cleanse Middle Earth of its festering malignancy. He knew he would try again. Fail, perhaps. And try once more. A thousand, thousand times if need be, but he would not give up the quest.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Giving Up, Glowing, Evil

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• My sleep wasn't peaceful, though. I have the sense of emerging from a world of dark, haunted places where I traveled alone.

  Suzanne Collins

  Sleep, Dark, Peaceful

  Suzanne Collins (2010). “Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3)”, p.163, Scholastic Inc.

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• I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn't matter too much. The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way. Peter, there's nothing in the world that you can offer me, except this. Offer me this and you can have anything I've got to give. My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That's the only way I function. That's all I am.

  Ayn Rand

  Motivation, Selfish, People

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.553, Penguin

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• No one who claims this to be a small world has ever flown across the Pacific.

  J. Maarten Troost

  Claims, Small World, Pacific

  J. Maarten Troost (2004). “The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific”, Broadway

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• I told her the world was full of nice people. I'd have hated to try to prove it to her, but I said it, anyway.

  Jim Thompson

  Nice, People, Trying

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• In this world, only winter is certain

  George R. R. Martin

  Winter, This World, Certain

  George R. R. Martin (2011). “A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five”, p.160, Bantam

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• And after I act as your intermediary and he takes you back to Faery, then what?" "Then all will be made right, and I'll be invincible again." She rolled her eyes. "I meant, what happens to me? While you may be the most important thing to your egotistical little self in your narcissistic little world, guess what— so am I in mine.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Eye, Self, Important

  Karen Marie Moning (2012). “The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle”, p.1307, Dell

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• Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator’s mother carries her child up the stairs and the reader follows, for days. But World War I passes in a paragraph. I needed 125 pages to get from Labor Day to Christmas vacation. In six more words, here’s spring.

  Richard Powers

  Mother, Children, Spring

  Richard Powers (2009). “Generosity: An Enhancement”, p.166, Macmillan

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• Sometimes, a word succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its creators, like a virus sent into the world to infect common speech.

  Jasper Fforde

  Dream, Viruses, Speech

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• That was the problem with loving people: it made you weak. It made you need them. It made the thought of not having them the worst thing in the world.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  People, Needs, Problem

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2010). “Flirt: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.27, Penguin

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• Laugh and the world laughs with you!

  Grant Morrison

  Laughter, Sleep, Insomnia

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• I felt like a kid standing in the world's greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.

  Ernest Cline

  Kids, Play, Watches

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