Quotes about the World

Most popular the world quotes

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing. It was here first. - Mark Twain quote.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing. It was here first.
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page. - Augustine of Hippo quote.
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.

Travel

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. - Oscar Wilde quote.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

mankind

The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. - Virginia Woolf quote.
The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

laughter beauty

The world is a library of strange and wonderful books, and sometimes we just need to go prowling through the stacks.

libraries books

Weep not that the world changes—did it keep
A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.

change crying

There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting that the text. The world is one of these books. - George Santayana quote.
There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting that the text. The world is one of these books.
This world is but canvas to our imaginations. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

imagination

The world is but a school of inquiry. - Michel de Montaigne quote.
The world is but a school of inquiry.

inquiry

The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.  Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion.

laughter

The whole world is a scab.  The point is to pick it constructively.
Peter Beard Loose Talk: The Book of Quotes from the Pages of Rolling Stones Magazine
The world is  . . . like dust.  You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it.  It is sifted so fine, it doesn't even grit on your teeth.  But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. - Georges Bernanos quote.
The world is  . . . like dust.  You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it.  It is sifted so fine, it doesn't even grit on your teeth.  But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands.
For the world, I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in. - Sir Thomas Browne quote.
For the world, I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.
The world is a gambling-table so arranged that all who enter the casino must play and all must lose more or less heavily in the long run, though they win occasionally by the way. - Samuel Butler quote.
The world is a gambling-table so arranged that all who enter the casino must play and all must lose more or less heavily in the long run, though they win occasionally by the way.
This world is but a thoroughfare full of woes. - Geoffrey Chaucer quote.
This world is but a thoroughfare full of woes.
The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it. - Carlo Goldoni quote.
The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it.
The world is not black and white.  More like black and grey. - Graham Greene quote.
The world is not black and white.  More like black and grey.
The world, that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable. - Nathaniel Hawthorne quote.
The world, that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable.
There are two worlds; the world that we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imaginations.
Call the world if you please "The Vale of Soul-Making." - John Keats quote.
Call the world if you please "The Vale of Soul-Making."
One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. - Arthur Koestler quote.
One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions.
What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself. - Lewis Mumford quote.
What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself.
The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do. - Robert M. Pirsig quote.
The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.
The World's a mazy Labyrinth;
Man's lost without a Guide;
For if he vainly trust his Strength,
To Ruin he's decoy'd. - Francis Quarles quote.
The World's a mazy Labyrinth;
Man's lost without a Guide;
For if he vainly trust his Strength,
To Ruin he's decoy'd.
The world is . . . a kind of spiritual kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks. - Edwin Arlington Robinson quote.
The world is . . . a kind of spiritual kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.
There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting that the text.  The world is one of these books.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.
The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel!  This is the quintessence of all I have learnt in fifty years!
The world is divided into two classes: invalids and nurses. - James Abbott McNeill Whistler quote.
The world is divided into two classes: invalids and nurses.
The world is a funny paper read backwards.  And that way it isn't so funny. - Tennessee Williams quote.
The world is a funny paper read backwards.  And that way it isn't so funny.
Maybe this world is another planet's Hell. - Aldous Huxley quote.
Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.

food for thought

The world's a wood, in which all lose their way,
Though by a different path each goes astray.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt? - Kahlil Gibran quote.
What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life. - John F. Kennedy quote.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

mankind