Only One World Quotes & Sayings

A singular confusion exists about the notions of 'culture' and 'civilization'.
Culture began with the 'prologue in heaven.' With its religion, art, ethics, and philosophy, it will always be dealing with man's relation to that heaven from whence he came. Everything within culture means a confirmation or a rejection, a doubt or a reminiscence of the heavenly origin of man. Culture is characterized by this enigma and goes on through all time with the steady striving to solve it.
On the other hand, civilization is a continuation of the zoological, one-dimensional life, the material exchange between man and nature. This aspect of life differs from other animals' lives, but only in its degree, level, and organization. Here, one does not find man embarrassed by evangelical, Hamletian, or Karamasovian problems. The anonymous member of society functions here only by adopting the goods nature and changing the world by his work according to his needs. — Alija Izetbegovic

There are 7 billion people in the world, but there's only one heavyweight champion of the world, and that's me. — Tyson Fury

Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman ... whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip. It was the only kind of loyalty they seemed to have. Men were different. They might hate each other but they stuck together against the world and against any woman who would ensnare one of them. — Betty Smith

When I travel around the world, I see that poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent? The Earth can produce enough for everyone's need. But not enough for everyone's greed. — Philip Wollen

Why should I trust you?" Her eyes narrowed. "All I really know about you is that you're not loyal to your girlfriends, you treat one-night stands like crap, and apparently you've made quite a name for yourself not only in the business world, but also in the bedroom since we last met. — Zoe Forward

We are not the only ones affected by our recovery. The spiritual awakening heals the world one person at a time. — Marta Mrotek

Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work, and perhaps in addition, lend a hand in improving society, after schooling is done. — Jacques Barzun

It didn't matter.
Carson wasn't the one for me. He wasn't even the one for right now. My life would hopefully have its great love story but this wasn't it. It would happen in D.C. in the next four years or it would happen in Africa, if I ever got there, or in Sienna or, for all I knew, Kentucky or Timbuktu.
Life was long.
And people only really had great love affairs in high school in the movies. And maybe during world wars. But this was not a movie and not a war, even if it sometimes felt that way. It was only high school and it was almost over with anyway. — Tara Altebrando

We have noted thatthe two creation stories contained no pointers toward male "headship" in the sense that men or husbands are supposed to exercise authority or leadership over women or wives. But the audience of Genesis knew that patriarchy was a reality of life. Genesis here tells them how this came to be. Male authority or domination was not God's design but a consequence of a breakdown in relationship between humanity and God, between humanity and the animal world, and between human beings and one another. From now on, the Bible will assume the reality of patriarchy and of male headship, but it begins by noting that this came about only as a result of those various breakdowns of relationship. — John E. Goldingay

What I could tell the boy was, the moment we are born appears to be the very same moment we forget we are loved. Now isn't this awkward? Shouldn't the two things dovetail, love and memory? Shouldn't a feeling that powerful be carved on a tree so no one can ignore its message? To come so far to be in this world only to forget something all-important - what kind of a journey is that? I'll bet that 90 percent of the love that surrounds us is dismissed or discounted - the cup of tea a friend makes, the letter from a faraway auntie. The fact that no one feels loved enough merely proves my point. — Laurie Fox

An indigenous culture with sufficient territory, and bilingual and intercultural education, is in a better position to maintain and cultivate its mythology and shamanism. Conversely, the confiscation of their lands and imposition of foreign education, which turns their young people into amnesiacs, threatens the survival not only of these people, but of an entire way of knowing. It is as if one were burning down the oldest universities in the world and their libraries, one after another - thereby sacrificing the knowledge of the world's future generations. — Jeremy Narby

No one should take away the wrong lessons from the Jewish and Christian plight in the face of the modern world. Can others presume to step forward blithely to take over the baton? Hardly. The modern world's challenge to religion is not escaped so easily. The sorry state of these two biblical faiths under the impact of modernity is actually a compliment to them and a caution to others. Those first hit by modernity are those worst hit, but this is a backhanded acknowledgement of their leadership. Similarly, those farther behind may appear to be better off, but only so long as they stay farther behind and don't engage with the challenges of the modern word. — Os Guinness

Do you know anyone who would be willing to die to save those five-thousand serial killers?"
"No. Everyone I know is too smart for that!"
"Yet Someone did die to save all of the serial killers, and all of the old women, and all of the soldiers, and all of the babies that the world has ever known. That one is Jesus Christ. He died for you and for me. He died for everyone, because in this world our sin has condemned us to death, and the only way that we can be saved was for someone who was Himself without sin to be willing to die in our place."
Molly was silent. Her bright smile had faded, and she felt tears well up in her eyes. — Joyce Swann

I was an ambassador for Betway during the Rugby World Cup and at the moment I'm working as an ambassador for Artemis Investment Management. I also organised the first Rugby Aid in 2015. We had celebrities playing rugby against former England team players and raised a ton of money for Rugby For Heroes [a charity for former servicemen and women]. Only one celeb got crunched quite badly - Jaime Laing from Made in Chelsea ended up with cracked ribs. — Mike Tindall

The means are ... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one powerful nation like Russia - barbaric as she is said to be - to place herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the world! — Leo Tolstoy

There is a religious hallelujah, but there are many other ones[ ... ] When one looks at the world, there's only one thing to say, and it's hallelujah. That's the way it is. — Leonard Cohen

One of the most commonly overlooked spiritual practices is daring to be completely honest with everyone you encounter. Some may say others cannot handle their honesty, but true honesty is not a strategy or a weapon of any kind. It is the willingness to be open and absolutely transparent in sharing how any moment feels in your heart. It has nothing to do with confrontation, accusation, or any form of blame. True honesty is the willingness to stand completely exposed, allowing the world to do what it may, and say what it will, only so you may know who you are - beyond all ideas. — Matthew Kahn

There are almost 200 currencies of the world, but there's only one international currency. There are almost 200 currencies controlled by central banks and governments, but there is only one mathematical currency today, and that is bitcoin. We are going to build more of them. Cryptographic currencies are going to be a mainstay of our financial future. They are going to be a part of the future of this planet because they have been invented. It's as simple as that. You cannot un-invent this technology. You cannot turn this omelette back into eggs. — Andreas M. Antonopoulos

There is no one in the world that can best understand you the way you understand yourself. It only take you to make the best of you. — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

One of God's central qualities is compassion, a word that in Hebrew is related to the word for "womb." Not only is compassion a female image suggesting source of life and nourishment but it also has a feeling dimension: God as compassionate Spirit feels for us as a mother feels for the children of her womb. Spirit feels the suffering of the world and participates in it ... — Marcus Borg

No factions? A world in which no one knows who they are or where they fit? I can't even fathom it. I imagine only chaos and isolation. — Veronica Roth

That left two possibilities, really.
Possibility one: Magic was so incredibly opaque, convoluted, and impenetrable, that even though wizards and witches had tried their best to understand, they'd made little or no progress and eventually given up; and Harry would do no better.
Or ...
Harry cracked his knuckles in determination, but they only made a quiet sort of clicking sound, rather than echoing ominously off the walls of Diagon Alley.
Possibility two: He'd be taking over the world.
Eventually. Perhaps not right away. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I was taught when I was young that if people would only love one another, all would be well with the world. I found when I tried to put that into practice, not only were other people seldom lovable but I wasn't very lovable myself. — George Bernard Shaw

I know change is possible, I know there is an alternative, because I live a completely different life to the one I was born with. I also know that the solution is not fame or money or any transient adornment of the individual. The only Revolution that can really change the world is the one in your own consciousness, and mine has already begun. — Russell Brand

The world somehow is always the same. The only thing that can improve is the individual life. One can live a good life. One can give life a meaning. Either by drinking oneself to death or by painting oneself to death or by loving oneself to death. — Odd Nerdrum

In the old tongue which had once been his world's lingua franca, most words, like khef and ka, had many meanings. The word char, however - char as in Charlie the Choo-Choo - had only one. Char meant death. — Stephen King

Anyone who can read history with both hemispheres of the brain knows that a world comes to an end every instant
the waves of time leave washed up behind themselves only dry memories of a closed & petrified past
imperfect memory, itself already dying & autumnal. And every instant also gives birth to a world
despite the cavillings of philosophers & scientists whose bodies have grown numb
a present in which all impossibilities are renewed, where regret & premonition fade to nothing in one presential hologrammatical psychomantric gesture. — Hakim Bey

Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding," Joseph exclaimed. "If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?"
The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: "There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun. — Hermann Hesse

The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was. — Lin Yutang

Now I don't know if you realize it, but the film industry's a small world. It's like living in a tenement at one end of a back alley. Not only do you see everybody's dirty laundry, but once rumors start, you can't stop 'em. — Haruki Murakami

There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it. — Romain Rolland

For three thousand years it had been the concent's policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites, injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs, advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that of a dried flower to that of a buffalo. — Neal Stephenson

Only when every one of us and every nation learns the secret of love for all mankind will the world become a great orchestra, following the beat of the Greatest Conductor of all. — Artur Rodzinski

If our mental processes become focused on our internal dogmas and isolated from the unfolding, constantly dynamic outside world, we experience mismatches between our mental images and reality. Then confusion and disorder and uncertainty not only result but continue to increase. Ultimately, as disorder increases, chaos can result. Boyd showed why this is a natural process and why the only alternative is to do a destructive deduction and rebuild one's mental image to correspond to the new reality. — Robert Coram

Good only for destruction - has destroyed all that was valuable in the monarchy - is destroying France with daemonic energy - this tawdry, theatrical empire - a deeply vulgar man - nothing French about him - insane ambition - the whole world one squalid tyranny. His infamous treatment of the Pope! — Patrick O'Brian

There is a story they tell of two dogs. Both at separate times walk into the same room. One comes out wagging his tail while the other comes out growling. A woman watching this goes into the room to see what could possibly make one dog so happy and the other so mad. To her surprise she finds a room filled with mirrors. The happy dog found a thousand happy dogs looking back at him while the angry dog saw only angry dogs growling back at him. What you see in the world around you is a reflection of who you are. — Anonymous

And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way," Leibniz said. "Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle
all in the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe
for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient. — Neal Stephenson

When I say 'rare,' it's my own term. It's like you're doing something with a photo that is dominant that no one has ever seen before. #Rare means that it can only be seen here. It's just a rare moment that I'm sharing with the world. — Theophilus London

If love were the only thing, I
would follow you - in rags, if need be - to the world's end; for you hold
my heart in the hollow of your hand! But is love the only thing?
I know people write and talk as if it were. Perhaps, for some, Fate lets
it be. Ah, if I were one of them! But if love had been the only thing, you
would have let the King die in his cell.
Honour binds a woman too, Rudolf. My honour lies in being true to
my country and my House. I don't know why God has let me love you;
but I know that I must stay. — Anthony Hope

So Plato talked about these beings that used to exist that had four legs and four arms and two heads. They were totally self-contained and ecstatic and powerful. Too powerful, so Zeus cut them all in half and scattered all the halves around the world so that humans were doomed to forever look for their other half, the one who shared their very soul. Only the luckiest humans find their split-apart, you see. — Jandy Nelson

Overwhelmed? Delegate. For perfectionists of the world, this is often a challenge. While you may think only you can do it best, you are denying someone else an opportunity to learn when you do everything yourself. Being the bottleneck serves no one, including you. — Lisa A. Mininni

This new war, like the previous one, would be a test of the power of machines against people and places; whatever its causes and justifications, it would make the world worse. This was true of that new war, and it has been true of every new war since ...
I knew too that this new war was not even new but was only the old one come again. And what caused it? It was caused, I thought, by people failing to love one another, failing to love their enemies. — Wendell Berry

The point is that only one thing matters in this world, to prepare oneself for death. One can try to be as comfortable as possible until one dies ... Because being comfortable does not have any meaning either. It just does not. Everything is only a big meaninglessness that one must bear. — Odd Nerdrum

Bohr's standpoint, that a space-time description is impossible, I reject a limine. Physics does not consist only of atomic research, science does not consist only of physics, and life does not consist only of science. The aim of atomic research is to fit our empirical knowledge concerning it into our other thinking. All of this other thinking, so far as it concerns the outer world, is active in space and time. If it cannot be fitted into space and time, then it fails in its whole aim and one does not know what purpose it really serves. — Erwin Schrodinger

There are only 2 responses to the world, fear or love. Your life depends on which one you choose. — Deepak Chopra

The world is a jungle and each of us is alone. Each of us is the hunter and every one is the hunted. Kill or be killed. In this jungle, only the smartest will survive. Your brother is smart, you are not. You are a fool, filled with stupid notions of duty. Unless you cure yourself of this disease, you are doomed. — Anand Neelakantan

One day very soon, we'll be asked: what did we do. And we will say: we did everything we could ... we have to ... because if we don't there won't be anyone left to ask. We have never faced a crisis this big, that we have never had better ideas to solve. This is our only home. We can choose today to make a world of difference. — Morgan Freeman

It really so in your souls? Are you now henceforth dead to the world, and dead to sin, and quickened into the life of Christ? If you are so, then the text will bear to you a third and practical meaning, for it will not merely be true that your old man is condemned to die and a new nature is bestowed, but in your common actions you will try to show this by newness of actual conduct. Evils which tempted you at one time will be unable to beguile you now because you are dead to them: the charms of the painted face of the world will no longer attract your attention, for your eyes are blind to such deceitful beauties. You have obtained a new life which can only be satisfied by new delights, which can only be motivated by new purposes and constrained by new principles suitable to its own nature. This — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Though in this world there are phenomena that might justly be termed "strange," there are no phenomena that cannot -- given sufficient information -- be explained. This is not to suggest that for every effect there is a cause, of course. That is an assumption that we are not prepared to make, less it launch us ineluctably down the path of determinism. This is only to suggest, rather, that there is no "thing" that exists without some relation to at least one other "thing," and it is the matrix of a "thing's" relationship that determines its meaning in the larger context of the world. Even something strange can be explained by tracing its relational lines of flight, however casual or casual they may be. — Dustin Long

Morally as well as physically, there is only one world, and we all have to live in it — Mary Midgley

Desire is action. In the inner world, your desires bring about their own fulfillment, effortlessly. That inner world, and the exterior one, intersect and interweave. They only appear separate. In the physical world, time may have to elapse, or whatever. Conditions may have to change, or whatever, but the desire will bring about the proper results. The feeling of effortlessness is what is important. — Seth

You should not have too many people waiting on you, you should have to do most things for yourself. Hotel service is embarrassing. Maids, waiters, bellhops, porters and so forth are the most embarrassing people in the world for they continually remind you of inequities which we accept as the proper thing. The sight of an ancient woman, gasping and wheezing as she drags a heavy pail of water down a hotel corridor to mop up the mess of some drunken overprivileged guest, is one that sickens and weighs upon the heart and withers it with shame for this world in which it is not only tolerated but regarded as proof positive that the wheels of Democracy are functioning as they should without interference from above or below. Nobody should have to clean up anybody else's mess in this world. It is terribly bad for both parties, but probably worse for the one receiving the service. — Tennessee Williams

If I became lost in the multiverse, exploring infinite parallel dimensions, my only criterion for settling down somewhere would be whether or not I could find you: and once I did, I'd stay there even if it was a world ruled by giant spider-priests, or one where killer robots won the Civil War, or even a world where sandwiches were never invented, because you'd make it the best of all possible worlds anyway, and plus we could get rich off inventing sandwiches. — Tim Pratt

My sister deserves the world," Max agreed. "She's not willing to take it for herself, though. Someone is going to have to give it to her. And, for someone to give it to her, she's going to have to let that someone get close to her. The only one who has even made it through her front door is you. That has to mean something. — Lily Harper Hart

It makes one realize that the physicality if our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible. — Garth Stein

Pope smiled. "You're thinking all wrong, boy. There's no such thing as law or government inside this room. It's just you and me. I am the one and only authority in your little world, whose borders are these walls. I could kill you right now if I wanted to. — Blake Crouch

That's because true travel, the kind with no predetermined end, is one of the most selfish endeavors we can possibly undertake-an act in which we focus solely on our own fulfillment, with little regard to those we leave behind. After all, we're the ones venturing out into the big crazy world, filling up journals, growing like weeds. And we have the gall to think they're just sitting at home, soaking in security and stability.
It is only when we reopen these wrapped and ribboned boxes, upon our triumphant return home, that we discover nothing is the way we had left it before. — Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Every thing in the world can wait but one. Only love can't wait. — Catherine M. Wilson

All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions. — Thomas Paine

Following the Universal Way means practicing selflessness and extending virtue to the world unconditionally. In this way one not only eliminates the heavy contamination accumulated throughout many lifetimes but may also bring about the possibility of restoring one's original divine nature and become an integral being of the multi-universe. — Lao-Tzu

Miss Brobity's Being, young man, was deeply imbued with homage to Mind. She revered Mind, when launched, or, as I say, precipitated, on an extensive knowledge of the world. When I made my proposal, she did me the honour to be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, as to be able to articulate only the two words, "O Thou!" meaning myself. Her limpid blue eyes were fixed upon me, her semi-transparent hands were clasped together, pallor overspread her aquiline features, and, though encouraged to proceed, she never did proceed a word further. I disposed of the parallel establishment by private contract, and we became as nearly one as could be expected under the circumstances. But she never could, and she never did, find a phrase satisfactory to her perhaps-too-favourable estimate of my intellect. To the very last (feeble action of liver), she addressed me in the same unfinished terms. — Charles Dickens

If the aristocracy of the whole white race is so to melt in a world of the colored races of the Earth, I for one should only rejoice in such a divine triumph of the sacrificial idea in history; for it would mean the humanization of mankind. — George Edward Woodberry

To be honest, I love watching some of the old cartoons and new ones that are popular. It's another way to make me happy and reminisce the good old times. Plus, it makes me forget the recreational world around me. If only the economy would let loose and not tire everyone out. I'm just saying. People have an inner child somewhere. I have one, too. So it's cool to have an inner child at times. It can brighten your day and see another view in life. — Simi Sunny

This was puzzling, as the standard textbook of psychiatry at the time stated that incest was extremely rare in the United States, occurring about once in every million women.8 Given that there were then only about one hundred million women living in the United States, I wondered how forty seven, almost half of them, had found their way to my office in the basement of the hospital. Furthermore, the textbook said, "There is little agreement about the role of father-daughter incest as a source of serious subsequent psychopathology." My patients with incest histories were hardly free of "subsequent psychopathology" - they were profoundly depressed, confused, and often engaged in bizarrely self-harmful behaviors, such as cutting themselves with razor blades. The textbook went on to practically endorse incest, explaining that "such incestuous activity diminishes the subject's chance of psychosis and allows for a better adjustment to the external world."9 — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

You are one and only in this world and I do not want to lose you, so I want us to be only one. — Auliq Ice

Yea ! by your works are ye justified
toil unrelieved ;
Manifold labours, co-ordinate each to the sending achieved ;
Discipline, not of the feet but the soul, unremitting, unfeigned ;
Tortures unholy by flame and by maiming, known, faced, and disdained ;
Courage that suns
Only foolhardiness ; even by these, are ye worthy of your guns. — Gilbert Frankau

You had no right." "Ah, the morally outraged cry of the weak: You're not 'allowed' to do that. One is allowed to do anything one can get away with. Only when you understand that will you know your place in this world. And your power. Might is right. — Karen Marie Moning

When the desire to get rid of the sensory symptoms of sin so that one can live a life of peace and safety is the only goal, and that goal is achieved by a work other than the work of Christ, the end may be peace in this life but God's certain wrath in the world to come. Mr. Worldly-Wiseman is a friend to sinners who want to lose their sense of sin, but the sworn enemy to all who desire lasting peace and eternal life.
7. — John Bunyan

Worship isn't destructive, Martin. I know that.
I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What else has he got? He can hardly read. He knows no physics or engineering to make to world real for him. No paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it. No music except television jingles. No history except tales from a desperate mother. No friends. Not one kid to give him a joke, or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist. — Peter Shaffer

Buddhas can take you to the boundary line of meditation and samadhi. That is the only difference between meditation and samadhi. If your mind has become utterly quiet and silent, but only the master is there, then it is meditation. If your mind has become so quiet that even the master has disappeared, it is samadhi. The last barrier is going to be the master. He will take you out of the world, but one day you will have to leave him too. And the real master will always keep you alert that you have to leave him one day, at the final stage. — Rajneesh

At this stage, it was only man. Only change, carrying the world from one state to another. In time, there would be more to be done, and the changes would not be so easy. He would go to war and he would die.

His day had passed. Things would change, they would find ruin, and the ruins would settle.

There was no emotional at this, no concern, no anxiety. It simply was. — Wildbow

Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he's also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes. — Michael Eric Dyson

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Most of these super-sovereigns feel that God can comment if he wants to, but God must avoid getting loud. While God is welcome to his opinions, he is only one voice, and he doesn't get extra points just for being God. The unstudied opinionated are prone to say, even to God, "Yes, but here's what I think." In such a world, classic apologetics has lost much of its force. — Calvin Miller

For the mind and the imagination, bookstores aren't enough, college courses aren't enough, the Internet isn't enough. Those resources are all governed by the tastes and needs of the moment. Only libraries take the long view, quietly shelving the unused with the used, knowing that one of these days the two categories will be reversed by a student's discovery of those hitherto undisturbed volumes whose contents will unsettle the learned world. — Helen Vendler

It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent. — George Alec Effinger

This basic problem of relevance-cum-subservience has been given an added twist in the modern world, where relevance has become not only hollow but fragile and short-lived. A wider range of choices, a deeper uncertainty of events, a more pressing need for new styles - all this makes for an accelerating turnover of issues, concerns and fads. Nothing tires like a trend or ages faster than a fashion. Today's bold headline is tomorrow's yellowing newsprint. Thus the relevance-hungry liberals achieve relevance, but their victory is Pyrrhic. It is precisely as they win that they lose. As they become relevant to one group or movement, they become irrelevant to another and find themselves rudely dismissed. Far from being in the avant-garde, Christian liberals trot smartly behind the times. Far from being genuinely new or radical, they catch up and announce their discoveries breathlessly, only to see the vanguard disappearing down the road on the trail of a different pursuit. — Os Guinness

It was one of the most sublimely exhilarating moments of my life. I was half a step in front of the real, an inch or two beyond the confines of my body, and when the thing happened just as I thought it would, I felt my skin had become transparent. I wasn't occupying space anymore so much as melting into it. What was around me was also inside me, and I had only to look into myself in order to see the world. — Paul Auster

The weary Italian woman nodded at her children behind her. "Where we came from, everybody lives only one kind of life. Alessandro said he wanted his children to choose the life, not the life to choose the children. And also," she added, panting, slowing down and wiping her brow, "he said America is the only place in the world where even the poor can be smart. — Paullina Simons

One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed ...
When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began everybody has beaten the Germans. They beat no one - except one another. He made his reputation fighting them. — Leo Tolstoy

I'm starting to think that most villains aren't evil - they are just misundertood.
Or victims of that manipulative force: Love.
Love causes war and causes death, breaks souls and breaks lives. It runs people into the ground, makes them behave like moronic, immoral beasts, before it dances off, leaving only destruction in its wake - hearts blown wide open for the whole world to see.
Love puts the blame on the poor souls who succumb to it.
Love, that ultimate villainess. She makes examples of us all.
And yet we still come back for more.
We keep playing the role she gives us.
For one more chance to feel alive. — Karina Halle

How long have I been here? I haven't been able to tell day from night with eyes covered." [Vincent]
"Nor could you anyway, in here. There are no windows and the walls are so thick you cannot hear the church bells. It was built so that the one who prayed here would not be aware of the passage of time or the world outside. When we reach into the higher planes, we pass beyond time. Only the body is governed by time, but that too, I will change". [Sylvian] — Karen Maitland

Fate forces its way to the powerful and violent. With subservient obedience it will assume for years dependency on one individual:Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, because it loves the elemental human being who grows to resemble it, the intangible element. Sometimes, and these are the most astonishing moments in world history, the thread of fate falls into the hands of a complete nobody but only for a twitching minute. — Stefan Zweig

We are all more interested in ourselves than in any one else in this world, until love comes; then we soon learn to a love man more than life, and when a child comes we learn another love, so clear, so high, so purifying, that we become of no moment at all, and live only for those we love." "You — Gene Stratton-Porter

Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. So the belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans, who know we are going to die, and who mourn those who in the normal course of things die before us - grandparents, parents, teachers, and older friends. Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of a collective history. 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. If the goal is having some space in which to live one's own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another. * * * P — Susan Sontag

All human beings crave that closeness of another. Its the desire to have one person in the world want to be associated with them and to have the person choose and manage to be faithful to only you. — Miss Gath

But with one exception, all things pass from this world and time erases not just memories but entire civilizations, reducing everyone and every monument to dust. The only thing that survives is love, for it is an energy as enduring as light, which travels outward from its source toward the ever-expanding boundaries of the universe, the very energy of which all things were conceived and with which all things will be sustained in a world beyond this world of time and dust and forgetting. — Dean Koontz

So you're six years old, you're reading 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,' and it becomes rapidly obvious that there are only two kinds of men in the world: dwarves and Prince Charmings. And the odds are seven to one against your finding the prince. — Emily Levine

To call ourselves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgement and second thoughts told me there was a reall truth therein: for first wee are a rude masse, and in the ranke of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kinde of being not yet priviledged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existence, which comprehend the creatures not onely of world, but of the Universe. — Thomas Browne

The world of "magick" is, nine times out of ten, a world where people can hide their deep-set insecurity and personal damage behind illusion, constructed identities and claims to privileged knowledge, power or spiritual status. A gaudy carnival magic show, conducted with props that have long since begun to disintegrate with age, that seems to function only to distract people from the real magic that is occurring all around them, in every facet of their lives, every day of their lives. While the rituals and magical techniques of the Temple seem overly simplistic in comparison with the loftier Qabalahs, tables of correspondences and secret formulae of "high" magick, they have one thing which high magick quite often forgets: a concrete function. — Jason Louv

To worry is to acknowledge that the world is unpredictable, and there is power in understanding one's own powerlessness at times. But too often worry takes on life of its own. Men are quite prone to this. They'll plague themselves with so many 'what if's and 'if only's that they soon forget to ponder the true possibilities before them. Which inevitably lead to poor decisions. Whatever happens will happen. Sometimes we have say over the future. Sometimes we don't. Either way, worrying alone never accomplishes anything. — A. Lee Martinez

I don't know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don't understand are at work. I cannot believe that God "sends" illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don't believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best. "What did I do to deserve this?" is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is "If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?" As we saw in the previous chapter, it becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don't hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world. — Harold S. Kushner

You are holding in your hands not only a book of readings and instruction for the journey, but one monastic's heart of love held out to a searching world. — Paula D'Arcy

This whole Psalm offers itself to be drawn into these two opposite propositions: a godly man is blessed, a wicked man is miserable; which seem to stand as two challenges, made by the prophet: one, that he will maintain a godly man against all comers, to be the only Jason for winning the golden fleece of blessedness; the other, that albeit the ungodly make a show in the world of being happy, yet they of all men are most miserable. - Sir Richard Baker, 1640 — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Medicine labours to restore 'natural' structure or 'normal' function. But greed, egoism, self-deception,and self-pity are not abnormal in the same sense as astigmatism or a floating kidney. For who, in Heaven's name, would describe as natural or normal any man from whom these failings were wholly absent? 'Natural,' if you like, in a quite different sense; archnatural, unfallen. We have only seen one such Man. And he was not at all like the psychologist's picture of the integrated, balanced, adjusted, happily married, employed, popular citizen. You can't really be 'well adjusted' to your world if it says 'you havea devil' and ends by nailing you up naked to a stake of wood. — C.S. Lewis

Being a homicide detective ca be the loneliest job in the world. The friends of the victim are upset and in despair, but sooner or later - after weeks or months - they go back to their everyday lives. For the closest family it takes longer, but for the most part, to some degree, they too get over the grieving and despair. Life has to go on; it does go on. But the unsolved murders keep gnawing away and in the end there's only one person left who thinks night and day about the victim: it's the office who is left with the investigation. — Stieg Larsson

A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, and you can only gain a true knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which he is unconscious, and from fleeting expressions, which cross his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. But in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. His pretentiousness will only expose his vacuity. The lathe painted to look like iron is seen to be but a lathe. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. To the acute observer no one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of the soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

All too often we say of a man doing a good job that he is indispensable. A flattering canard, as so many disillusioned and retired and fired have discovered when the world seems to keep on turning without them. In business, a man can come nearest to indispensability by being dispensable in his current job. How can a man move up to new responsibilities if he is the only one able to handle his present tasks? It matters not how small or large the job you now have, if you have trained no one to do it as well, you're not available; you've made your promotion difficult if not impossible. — Malcolm Forbes

Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge. — Henry Miller