Harsh World Quotes

It is a harsh world, indescribably cruel. It is a gentle world, unbelievably beautiful. It is a world that can make us bitter, hateful, rabid, destroyers of joy. It is a world that can draw forth tenderness from us, as we lean towards one another over broken gates. It is a world of monsters and saints, a mutilated world, but it is the only one we have been given. We should let it shock us not into hatred or anxiety, but into unconditional love. ~ Richard Holloway

The cramped harsh world he portrays is a paradoxically eloquent assertion of the importance of what is so strikingly absent from it: small acts of kindness. ~ Robert Chandler

He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton. He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of the 'younger set,' in which it was the recognized custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he sometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly-wise and eager to please as the married lady whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years; without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred that unhappy being's life, and had disarranged his own plans for a whole winter.

How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out; but he was content to hold his view without analyzing it, since he knew it was that of all the carefully-brushed, white-waistcoated, buttonhole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their opera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product of the system. In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old New York gentility; he had probably read more, thought more, and even seen a good deal more of the world, than a ~ Edith Wharton

O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story ...
O, I die, Horatio; ~ William Shakespeare

I loved sliding into him as he lay on his back so I could watch his face while we moved together. On those nights I could coax him out of the harsh world and its problems into a safe place inhabited by just the two of us. For a brief time, my arms really were strong enough to protect him. Nothing else had ever made me feel so powerful or righteous. Some people say gay sex is wrong because it has no purpose. I pity them, because they've clearly never found with another person what Jamie and I shared in those moments. ~ Mari Donne

The harsh world unjustly reserved its most severe punishments for women. ~ Rosie Thomas

To see justice done, men were prepared to take the law into their own hands. In the Carolinas, bands of vigilantes or Regulators crisscrossed the territory in the late 1760s, stamping out local hooligans and waging war on interlopers. This vigilante attitude was epitomized by a Scots Borders descendant from Pittsylvania County, Virginia, named Captain William Lynch. He ruled as virtual dictator of his county, punishing wrongdoers and warning lawless elements that "we will inflict such corporal punishment on him or them, as to us shall seem adequate to the crime committed or the damage sustained." "Lynch's Law," and the punishments and hangings it inflicted, also became part of American culture - an ugly part, but a legacy of a harsh world and a harsh, unforgiving people. ~ Arthur Herman

He walked ahead of me down the hall and I was careful to keep a few steps behind him. I needed the distance. Close human contact was starting to scare me. In the past few weeks, all I'd known around people was pain. When people were face-to-face, tragedy struck. A look felt like a bee sting. It started to seem natural to be separated from people. I craved being alone. No one could hurt me inside my wall screens. They were slowly becoming a comfort, a cushion between me and the harsh world outside. I was stepping out of it less and less. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds. ~ Stephen King

So let me get this straight, you are telling me it's a harsh world, and using this as an excuse to add more to that harshness? ~ Mango Wodzak

If running a marathon excites you, create space in your life for it. Adding a new commitment means recalibrating different areas of your world. Logging more miles as your race date approaches means less time invested in other pursuits. Not forever, just during the months you train. Too, you will find how training fits into your world serves not only crossing the finish but other areas of life. ~ Gina Greenlee

Mothers and schools plant the seeds of nearly all the good and evil which exists in the world. ~ Benjamin Rush

These Red Pill analyses of ancient texts may seem simplistic and misguided to us. In fact, they are not really producing analyses at all. Their interpretations of the Classics should be approached not as readings of the ancient world, but rather as aspirational representations of the world they wish we inhabited. ~ Donna Zuckerberg

We are fully aware that, in a world at war, each set of belligerents is over ready to regard those who are not with them as against them; but the course we have followed is a just course. ~ Eamon De Valera

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they're full of bicycle trails. And this is happening to the world, and I think it is very very dangerous for our future generations, those of us who believe that the world is not only necessary to us in its pristine state, but it is in itself an act of some kind of spiritual thing. I said once, and I think this is true, the world did not have to be beautiful to work. But it is. What does that mean?
[from 'A Thousand Mornings' With Poet Mary Oliver for NPR Books] ~ Mary Oliver

I embrace the term 'evangelical,' if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That's a beautiful sort of thing. ~ Rob Bell

His favorite quote is from Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. ~ Emily Giffin

If the perpetrators of the World Trade Center plane crashes had a nuclear weapon, there's no doubt in my mind but that they would've detonated it in New York. ~ Ted Turner

(12) TWELVTH SIGN: Another sign of the learned man of the next world is that he saves himself from innovations even though the people are unanimous on innovations and novelties. He is rather diligent in studying the conditions of the companions, their conduct and character and their deeds. They spent their lives in jihad, meditation, avoidance of major and minor sins, observation of their outer conduct and inner self. But the greater object of thought of the learned men of the present time is to teach, compose books, to make argumentation, to give Fatwa, to become mutawali of Waqf estates, enjoy the properties of orphans, frequent the rulers and enjoy their company. ~ Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

He is my shy stubborn! Sounds weird! But it is true. He is stubborn no doubt, but he has no courage to face me! He loves me a lot! But he lives in that secret only! He cares for me, but feel angry to reveal it! But my darling, mark my words, I know you better in this world! Even you don't know, who are you! You know where is my life is living, It's in you. I don't know another meaning of purity other than this. ~ Eagles

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed. ~ A.E. Housman

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form < ~ Jack Kerouac

This physical world has no two things alike.
Every comparison is awkwardly rough.

You can put a lion next to a man,
but the placing is hazardous to both. ~ Rumi

The only proof of God in the world was color. Everything would have worked the same without it. So why would the world have been made so full of color if there wasn't a God? ~ Tony D'Souza

Jesus has paid the price to save and to set you free from the bondage of sin. All that you have to do is believe. It doesn't take an immense degree of knowledge to believe. It doesn't take a certificate of prestigious honor in the world of higher education to be accepted into the royal family of God. You just have to believe. ~ Calvin W. Allison

The unhappiest people in this world, are those who care the most about what other people think. ~ C. JoyBell C.

As a test of the closeness of your relationship with the world, sex could never be a patch on being murdered. (That's when someone really does risk his life for you.) ~ Quentin Crisp

The thing I admire most
about you
is no matter how hard,
or how much the world
has tried to
beat you,
break you,
destroy you,
and throw you to the wolves
you are still here,
turning all your pain
all your suffering
into armor,
into determination,
into weapons
and earning the respect
of that same pack of wolves
that were meant to rip you
limb from limb. ~ Nikita Gill

Against all the odds, we built a better navy than theirs - from scratch - in two months! We now rule the waves in the Mediterranean Sea - Our Sea! The day will come - it begins today - when Rome will master the world! Alexander will roll in his grave, Atlantis will decay in her decadence, and these demons of Harappa will entertain Hades with their theatrics this very night. But Rome will live on in fame and glory. It starts with our victory today! ~ Jennifer McKeithen

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. ~ Robert Fulghum

The world and it's people are my church".

~R. Alan Woods [1996] ~ R. Alan Woods

Nothing in this world takes over your blood like a murder case, nothing demands you, mind and body, with such a huge and blazing and irresistible voice. ~ Tana French

Learn to shake yourself loose from what the world believes is the only reality. ~ Neville Goddard

I like to communicate on my Instagram page with people: use it as a window to my world. ~ Brad Goreski

You can grow grapes in almost any part of the world. You just have to develop your palate enough to realize wine is an expression of the place where you make it. You don't have to take over the world; just be an artist and express your area. ~ Maynard James Keenan

The danger for the writer who is spurred by the religious view of the world is that he will consider this to be two operations instead of one. He will try to enshrine the mystery without the fact, and there will follow a further set of separations which are inimical to art. Judgement will be separated from vision, nature from grace, and reason from imagination.
They are separations which we see in our society and which exist in our writing. They are separations which faith tends to heal if we realize that faith is a 'walking in darkness' and not a theological solution to mystery. The poet is traditionally a blind man, but the Christian poet, and storyteller as well, is like the blind man whom Christ touched... ~ Flannery O'Connor

It is necessary to get a lot of men together, for the show of the thing, otherwise the world will not believe. That is the meaning of committees. But the real work must always be done by one or two men. ~ Anthony Trollope

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Spring-water in the green creek is clear Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white Silent knowledge - the spirit is enlightened of itself Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness. ~ Gary Snyder

I wanted to have friends from all over the world in the way of a man who has no friends. ~ Sam Lipsyte