Bright New World Quotes & Sayings

More and more the world resembles an entomologist's dream. The earth is moving out of its orbit, the axis has shifted; from the north the snow blows down in huge knife-blue drifts. A new ice age is setting in, the transverse sutures are closing up and everywhere throughout the corn belt the fetal world is dying, turning to dead mastoid. Inch by inch the deltas are drying out and the river beds are smooth as glass. A new day is dawning, a metallurgical day, when the earth shall clink with showers of bright yellow ore. As the thermometer drops, the form of the world grows blurred; osmosis there still is, and here and there articulation, but at the periphery the veins are all varicose, at the periphery the light waves bend and the sun bleeds like a broken rectum. — Henry Miller

For a year, Johnny lived the new, brutal truth that he was on his own.
But that's the way it was. What had been concrete one day proved sand the next; strength was illusion; faith meant shit. So what? So his once-bright world had devolved to cold, wet fog. That was life, the new order. Johnny had nothing to trust but himself, so that's the way he rolled - his path, his choices, and no looking back. — John Hart

(Of the main character seeing a new world for the first time.) The air was cold but not bitterly so, and it seemed a bit rough at the back of his throat. He gazed about him, and the very intensity of his desire to take in the new world at a glance defeated itself. He saw nothing but colours - colours that refused to form themselves into things. Moreover, he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are. His first impression was of a bright, pale world - a watercolour world out of a child's paint-box, a moment later he recognised the flat belt of light blue as a sheet of water, or of something like water, which came nearly to his feet. They were on the shore of a lake or river. — C.S. Lewis

All our language about the future ... is like a set of signposts pointing into a bright mist ... the New Testament image of the future hope of the whole cosmos, grounded in the resurrection of Jesus, gives as coherent a picture as we need or could have of the future that is promised to the whole world, a future in which, under the sovereign and wise rule of the creator God, decay and death will be done away with and a new creation born, to which the present one will stand as mother to child. — N. T. Wright

Joined the singing too, and when it was done and the applause rolled out once more, he was crying a bit himself. Rita was gone. Alice Underwood was gone. New York was gone. America was gone. Even if they could defeat Randall Flagg, whatever they might make would never be the same as that world of dark streets and bright dreams. — Stephen King

I see the American experience as being defined by the immigrant paradigm of rupture and renewal: rupture with the old world, the old ways, and renewal of the self in a bright but difficult New World. — Ayad Akhtar

The distinctive features of the world's civilisations are not simply and solely the giraffe and the city of Rome, as the children may perhaps have been led to imagine on the first evening, but also the elephant and the country of Denmark, beside many other things. Yes, everyday brought its new animal and its new country, its new kings and its new gods, its quota of those tough little figures which seem to have no significance, but are nevertheless endowed with a life and a value of their own, and may be added together or subtracted from one another at will. And finally poetry, which is grater than any country ; poetry with its bright palaces. — Halldor Laxness

It's like escaping a hot, bright room
for the serenity of a city at night, covered in snow.
People eliminated. A carpet of silence
for taxis to whisper across. The world becoming
a pleasant dream of itself. The itch
of want smoldering to life on skin. Memory sends
a chill vanishing between vertebrae.
It's New Year's Eve. Hail the Calendar! As if
clocks will pause for a moment
before reloading their long rifles. Years are tiny
freckles on the face of a century.
Where is the constellation we gazed at each night
Through a bill rolled so tight
the first President lost his breath, as our eyeballs
literally unraveled? I am alone
in the rectangular borough in the observatory,
where even fire trucks can't rescue
the arsonist stretching his calves in my brain. — Jeffrey McDaniel

We do matter. To believe that our lives are meaningful is the essence of faith. We are not as large, or as bright, or as eternal as the stars, but we carry humankind's message of love across the galaxy. We are the first. We are the world makers. Our nourishment is hope. Like the tender reed shaking in the wind, we will reach up to a new sun. — Amy Kathleen Ryan

To be conservative in politics is to take one's bearings not from the latest bright idea about how to make a better world, but by looking carefully at what the past reveals both about the kind of people we are and the problems that concern us. As we get older, we often become conservative in our habits, in our family practices, and in our recognition of the richness of our civilization, but this evolution of our character into a set of habits in no way blocks adventurousness. The old no less than the young may be found starting new enterprises, sailing around the world, and solving arcane academic questions. But it is in the ordinary business of life that we find our excitement, not in foolish collective dreams of political perfection. — Kenneth Minogue

If anyone's depressed for any reason, whether a relationship has fallen apart or they're having money problems, wearing feathered wings and a tutu takes you into a whole other world. A whole new woooooorld, a world of bright and shining stars! — Richard Simmons

And saying it
the first time we say it and mean it
we cross over into that other world that has so far been no more than a suspicion or a dream. Saying it, we enter the golden realm where the old structures of doubt and the agony of incompleteness disappear, and the utterance itself is the first bright rung on the ladder of new possibility. What a relief! What a joyous relief from the distinctive weight of your own soul, to be able to look unguardedly into the eyes of another and say it, meaning it and heady with knowing you mean it: "I love you." If the wind had blown through me at that moment, my body would have sung like a chime. — Glen Duncan

The World's New Age hath dawned. The sun is bright in heaven, for Balder hath returned. Earth rises a second time, from the deep sea; it rises clad with green verdure. The sound of falling waters fills the morning air. High soars the eagle; from the mountain ridge he espies the fish. . . . — Donald A. Mackenzie

We can't go on much longer morally. We can't go on much longer scientifically. The technology that was supposed to save us is ready to destroy us. New weapons are being made all the time, including chemical and biological weapons. Today the only bright spot on the horizon of this world is the promise of the coming again of Christ. — Billy Graham

Look," Grace said. "How strange! In spite of the rain, you can still see the stars. How bright they are tonight." She pointed, but Lorcan didn't look. His eyes remained fixed intently on her.
"I can't think of a finer sight in the whole world than the one I'm looking at right now," he said.
In spite of being drenched, Grace flushed at his words.
Lorcan's eyes sparkled at her, brighter than ever before.
It was as if the rare blue gems of his iriseshad been washed by the rain amd buffed by the moonlight to a new intensity. "Grace, there's been something I've wanted to do for a very long time now, but things have kept getting in the way." He reached forward, bringing a hand to the side of her face. Then he gently but firmly drew her wet face toward his. He gazed at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Then he brought his soft lips down to hers and kissed her. — Justin Somper

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry, aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert. — Willa Cather

Navigating this new world made Sunny feel like Dorothy stepping out from her black-and-white house into a world of color so bright it didn't seem real. Everything in this world seems like a dream. — Megan Hart

She knows what it means. Oh, wonderfully bright at 6 a.m., yes, wonderfully clear for an hour. But the shorter the days, the longer the nights, the darker the house, the easier it is, the easier it is, the easier it is, to mistake a shadow for the writing on the wall, the sound of overland footsteps for the distant crack of thunder, and the midnight chime of a New Year clock for the bell that tolls the end of the world. — Zadie Smith

This was when he first suspected that the kindly child-loving God extolled by his headmistress might not exist. As it turned out, most major world events suggested the same. But for Theo's sincerely godless generation, the question hasn't come up. No one in his bright, plate-glass, forward-looking school ever asked him to pray, or sing an impenetrable cheery hymn. There's no entity for him to doubt. His initiation, in front of the TV, before the dissolving towers, was intense but he adapted quickly. These days he scans the papers for fresh developments the way he might a listings magazine. As long as there's nothing new, his mind is free. International terror, security cordons, preparations for war - these represent the steady state, the weather. Emerging into adult consciousness, this is the world he finds. — Ian McEwan

That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space.
The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again.
So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't. — Carol Rifka Brunt

And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me. — Ray Bradbury

Why do you love it? I had a sense that I would enjoy her answer. I knew it would be unexpected and unique. Everything about her was unexpected and unique. She was my bright light of eccentricity in a very predictable and ordinary world. She made everything new and interesting or funny. — Penny Reid

There is room in this great and growing city for a journal that is not only cheap but bright, not only bright but large, not only large but truly democratic-dedicated to the cause of the people rather than that of the purse potentates-devoted more to the news of the New than the Old World-that will expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses-that will sever and battle for the people with earnest sincerity. — Joseph Pulitzer

And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre's eyes glittered with tears of rapture as he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre's newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and blossomed into new life. — Leo Tolstoy

You will never find peace with these fascists
You'll never find friends such as we
So remember that valley of Jarama
And the people that'll set that valley free.
From this valley they say we are going
Do not hasten to bid us adieu
Even though we lost the battle at Jarama
We'll set this valley before we're through.
All this world is like this valley called Jarama
So green and so bright and so fair
No fascists can dwell in our valley
Nor breathe in our new freedoms air. — Woody Guthrie

But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves. — Patricia Highsmith

His arrogance marked something new in the world, for this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors, courtesy of the most efficient propaganda machine ever created (with all due respect to Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis, who never achieved global domination). Hollywood's high priests understood innately the observation of Milton's Satan, that it was better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven, better to be a villain, loser, or antihero than virtuous extra, so long as one commanded the bright lights of center stage. In this forthcoming Hollywood trompe l'oeil, all the Vietnamese of any side would come out poorly, herded into the roles of the poor, the innocent, the evil, or the corrupt. Our fate was not to be merely mute; we were to be struck dumb. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

The cause of that happiness was gone, of course, dead and gone, but still we put our faith in places. We think that if we just lived somewhere different, everything would be okay. We believe that if we paint the stairway a bright new colour, and clear out the closets, our minds will follow. We'll take just about any ray of hope rather than accept that ninety-five per cent of the world we inhabit exists within the confines of our own skulls. — Michael Marshall

Too many of our preferences reflect nasty behaviours and states of mind that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment. Instead, wouldn't it be better if we rewrote our own corrupt code? — David Pearce

On this small world, there will be no more real darkness. But there will always be the Dark. Go out tonight, Lady Pedure. Look up. We are surrounded by the Dark and always will be. And just as our Dark ends with the passage of time in a New Sun, so the greater Dark ends at the shores of a million million stars. Think! If our sun's cycle was once less than a year, then even earlier our sun might have been middling bright all the time. I have students who are sure most of the stars are just like our sun, only much much younger, and many with worlds like ours. You want a deepness that endures, a deepness that Spiderkind can depend on? Pedure, there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever. — Vernor Vinge

The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. — Charles Dickens

I'd heard "Rhapsody in Blue" a thousand times and it always amazed me. It was so humble and then so bombastic. It was beautiful, bright, and terrifying: old and new, European and American. At times it sounded like Debussy, at times it sounded like Stravinsky, and at times it sounded like the Lower East Side in 1910.
"Rhapsody in Blue" was a quintessentially New York work of art, but it was also about moving from east to west, from the old world to the new... — Moby

All at once the hard, cold earth seemed to explode. The brown surface of the world dissolved and in its place was an impossible, an inconceivable, an unbelievable profusion of color: green grass and purple and red flowers; sprays of lily; white baby's breath that covered the hills; nodding fields of bright yellow daffodils; rich purple moss. The trees burst forth with new leaves. The weeping willow tree was a mass of tiny pale green leaves, thousands of them, which whispered and sighed together as the wind moved through its branches. There were fat heads of lettuce in the fields, and cucumbers lying like jewels among them, and enormous red tomatoes surrounded by thick, knotted vines.

And for the first time in 1,728 days, the clouds broke apart and there was dazzling blue sky, and light beyond what anyone could remember.

The sun had come out at last. — Lauren Oliver

The girl looks out the window, watching the gentle, familiar blue sky fade into darkness. The stars come out, slowly at first and then all together, diamond-bright, each one a new world to discover.
But no matter how long the girl looks, she feels nothing. Puzzled, she looks for the girl who wanted to be an explorer, the girl who wanted to learn deep-sea diving and mountain-climbing, the girl who wanted to travel the stars. But she can't find her. That girl died when her parents did, in a little shop in the slums of November. And now she has no soul left to shatter.
She closes the shade over the window. — Amie Kaufman

In a very real way, television is the new mythos. It defines the world, reinterprets it. The seasons do not change because Persephone goes underground. They change because new episodes air, because sweeps week demands conflagrations and ritual deaths. The television series rises slowly, arcs, descends into hiatus, and rises again with the bright, burning autumn. — Catherynne M Valente

That's why travel is so important, among other reasons: to get far enough away from our everyday lives to see those lives with new clarity. When you're literally on the other side of the world, when you're under the silent sea, watching a bright, silent world of fish and coral, when you're staring up at a sky so bright and dense with stars it makes you gasp, it's in those moments that you begin to see the fullness of your life, the possibility that still prevails, that always prevails. — Shauna Niequist