Quotes about the world
56 real sentences about the world, left by people who came before us, from c. 1754 BC to 1923, oldest first. Each one has its source and the original text.
Hammurabi Ḥammurabi
c. 1754 BC · Babylon
That the great should not oppress the weak, to counsel the widow and orphan, in Babylon, the city of Anu and Bêl, I raised up its head (the stele’s) in Ê-SAG-GIL (temple of Marduk there), the temple whose foundation is firm as the heaven and earth. To judge the judgment of the land, to decide the decisions of the land, to succor the injured, I wrote on my stele the precious words and placed them before my likeness, that of a righteous king.The Code of Hammurabi, epilogue · in place of the original: the English translation by C. H. W. Johns (1904)
Hammurabi Ḥammurabi
c. 1754 BC · Babylon
The oppressed who has a suit to prosecute may come before my image, that of a righteous king, and read my inscription and understand my precious words and may my stele elucidate his case.The Code of Hammurabi, epilogue · in place of the original: the English translation by C. H. W. Johns (1904)
Homer Ὅμηρος
c. 8th century BC · Ionia, ancient Greece
Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, the ruinous wrath that brought the Achaeans pains beyond counting.
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρίʼ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγεʼ ἔθηκεIliad, the first two lines
Confucius 孔子
5th century BC · Lu, Spring and Autumn China
"I have never yet seen anyone who loves virtue as much as he loves beauty."
子曰：「吾未見好德如好色者也。」Analects, book 9 (Zihan)
Confucius 孔子
5th century BC · Lu, Spring and Autumn China
"To hear something on the road and repeat it on the path is to throw virtue away."
子曰：「道聽而塗說，德之棄也。」Analects, book 17 (Yang Huo)
Gotama Buddha
c. 5th century BC · the Ganges plain, India
This is an old thing, Atula, not only of today: they blame the one who sits silent, they blame the one who speaks much, they blame the one who speaks in measure. There is no one in the world who is not blamed.
Porāṇametaṁ atula, netaṁ ajjatanāmiva; Nindanti tuṇhimāsīnaṁ, nindanti bahubhāṇinaṁ; Mitabhāṇimpi nindanti, natthi loke anindito.
Dhammapada 227
Gotama Buddha
c. 5th century BC · the Ganges plain, India
The faults of others are easy to see; one's own are hard to see.
Sudassaṁ vajjamaññesaṁ, attano pana duddasaṁ
Dhammapada 252
Mencius 孟子
4th century BC · Zou, Warring States China
"The trouble with people is that they love to be teachers of others."
人之患在好爲人師。Mencius, Li Lou I
Qu Yuan 屈原
3rd century BC · Chu, Warring States China · Handed down as the words of Qu Yuan
The whole world is muddy and I alone am clean. Everyone is drunk and I alone am sober. That is why I was banished.
舉世皆濁我獨清，衆人皆醉我獨醒，是以見放。"The Fisherman," in the Songs of Chu
Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus
23 BC · Rome
It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. Death hunts down even the man who runs.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur uirumOdes 3.2
Tacitus Cornelius Tacitus
AD 98 · Rome · Written as the speech of the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus, facing the Roman army
To plunder, to slaughter, to rob, they call by the false name of empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.Agricola 30
Juvenal Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis
c. AD 110 · Roman Empire
What am I to do in Rome? I do not know how to lie. If a book is bad, I cannot praise it and ask for a copy.
Quid Romae faciam? mentiri nescio; librum,
si malus est, nequeo laudare et poscereSatire 3
Marcus Aurelius Μᾶρκος Αὐρήλιος
170s · Roman Empire
Say to yourself at daybreak: today I shall meet the meddler, the ungrateful, the insolent, the deceitful, the envious, the unsociable.
Ἕωθεν προλέγειν ἑαυτῷ· συντεύξομαι περιέργῳ, ἀχαρίστῳ, ὑβριστῇ, δολερῷ, βασκάνῳ, ἀκοινωνήτῳMeditations 2.1
Wei Zheng 魏徵
637 · Tang China
Resentment does not lie in size: it is the people who are to be feared. They carry the boat and they overturn the boat. This is what demands deep care.
怨不在大，可畏惟人；載舟覆舟，所宜深慎。"Memorial to Emperor Taizong on Ten Things to Reflect On"
Du Fu 杜甫
c. 751 · Tang China · On seeing a column of soldiers being marched off to the front
Carts rumble, horses neigh, and the men marching have bows and arrows at their waists. Fathers, mothers, wives and children run to see them off, and the dust hides the Xianyang Bridge.
車轔轔，馬蕭蕭，行人弓箭各在腰。
耶孃妻子走相送，塵埃不見咸陽橋。"Song of the War Carts"
Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元
c. 810 · Tang China · In a district where delivering poisonous snakes freed a man from taxes, on meeting one who had lost his grandfather and father to the snakes and still could not give up the work
Who would have known that the poison of taxes is worse than this snake!
孰知賦斂之毒有甚是蛇者乎！"The Snake Catcher"
Yu Xuanji 魚玄機
860s · Tang China · On seeing the names of the newly passed candidates. Women could not sit the examinations
Cloud peaks fill my eyes in the clear spring weather. One by one the silver strokes come alive under the brush. I hate these silk robes that hide my lines of verse. I lift my head and envy, uselessly, the names on the list.
雲峰滿目放春晴，歷歷銀鉤指下生。
自恨羅衣掩詩句，舉頭空羨榜中名。"Visiting the South Tower of Chongzhen Temple and Seeing Where the New Graduates Wrote Their Names," in the Complete Tang Poems
Du Xunhe 杜荀鶴
later 9th century · Tang China
When small, its prickly head was buried deep in the grass. Now, little by little, it shows above the weeds. People do not know a tree that will touch the clouds. They wait until it touches the clouds to call it tall.
自小刺頭深草裏，而今漸覺出蓬蒿。
時人不識凌雲木，直待凌雲始道高。"The Little Pine," in the Complete Tang Poems
Du Xunhe 杜荀鶴
late 9th century · Tang China
Go to the deepest place of the deep mountains: even there, there is no way to escape the taxes and forced labour.
任是深山更深處，也應無計避征徭。"The Widow in the Mountains"
Choe Chiwon 崔致遠
c. 900 · Silla Korea · After he gave up office and went into Mount Gaya
Rushing wildly over piled rocks, it roars through range on range, and a human voice can hardly be made out a step away. Always afraid that talk of right and wrong might reach my ears, I have had the running water wrap the whole mountain round.
狂奔疊石吼重巒 人語難分咫尺間
常恐是非聲到耳 故敎流水盡籠山Goun jip, book 1, "Written at the Reading Hall on Mount Gaya"
Saadi سعدی
1258 · Shiraz, Persia
The children of Adam are limbs of one another, for in creation they are of one essence. When time brings pain to one limb, the other limbs cannot rest. You who feel no sorrow at the suffering of others, you do not deserve to be called human.
بنی آدم اعضای یکدیگرند
که در آفرینش ز یک گوهرند
چو عضوی به درد آورد روزگار
دگر عضوها را نماند قرار
تو کز محنت دیگران بی غمی
نشاید که نامت نهند آدمیThe Rose Garden (Gulistan), chapter 1
Saadi سعدی
1258 · Shiraz, Persia
Whoever brings the faults of others before you and counts them will surely carry your faults before others.
هر که عیب دگران پیش تو آورد و شمرد
بی گمان عیب تو پیش دگران خواهد بردGulistan (The Rose Garden), chapter 2
Liu Ji 劉基
mid-14th century · late Yuan China · early Ming China · The orange seller's answer, pointing at high officials, when blamed for selling oranges that are fine only on the outside
And where can one go and not find them: gold and jade on the outside, rotten cotton within?
又何往而不金玉其外，敗絮其中也哉？"The Words of the Orange Seller"
Ibn Khaldun ابن خلدون
1377 · Tunis · Cairo
The conquered are always in love with imitating the conqueror, in his emblems, his dress, his beliefs and all his ways and customs.
المغلوب مولع أبدا بالاقتداء بالغالب في شعاره وزيه ونحلته وسائر أحواله وعوائدهThe Muqaddimah, the title of a chapter
Kim Siseup 金時習
later 15th century · Joseon Korea
Now clear, then rain again; rain, then clear again. If Heaven's way is like this, how much more the hearts of men. The one who praised me turns and runs me down. The one who fled from fame goes seeking fame himself.
乍晴還雨雨還晴 天道猶然況世情
譽我便是還毀我 逃名却自爲求名Maewoldang jip, "Now Clear, Now Rain"
Rene Descartes René Descartes
1637 · France · the Netherlands
Good sense is the best shared-out thing in the world; for everyone thinks himself so well supplied with it that even those who are hardest to please in everything else do not usually want more of it than they have.
Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée; car chacun pense en être si bien pourvu, que ceux même qui sont les plus difficiles à contenter en toute autre chose n'ont point coutume d'en désirer plus qu'ils en ont.
Discourse on Method, the first sentence
Nameless singers 蔓橫淸類 無名氏
before 1728 · Joseon Korea · A song teasing a pedlar who cries his wares in difficult Chinese words
"Ladies of the house, buy my dongnanji!" You there, pedlar, what is it you are crying? Let's buy some. "Bone outside, flesh inside, both eyes turned to heaven, walking forward, walking backward, eight small legs and two big legs, crunching in dark soy: buy my dongnanji!" Pedlar, don't cry it in such a clumsy way. Just say pickled crab.
ᄃᆡᆨ들에 동난지이 사오 져 쟝스야 네 황후 긔 무서시라 웨ᄂᆞᆫ다 사쟈
外骨 內肉 兩目이 上天 前行 後行 小아리 八足 大아리 二足 靑醬 ᄋᆞ스슥 ᄒᆞᄂᆞᆫ 동난지이 사오
쟝스야 하 거복이 웨지 말고 게젓이라 ᄒᆞ렴은A long sijo (saseol sijo), in Cheonggu yeongeon (1728)
Thomas Paine
December 1776 · Britain · United States · France · Read to the soldiers in the winter of defeat and retreat in the War of Independence
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
The American Crisis, no. 1
Jane Austen
December 24, 1798 · England
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
Letter to her sister Cassandra
Jeong Yakyong 丁若鏞
1804 · Joseon Korea · In exile at Gangjin
Where there is grain there is no one to eat it; where there are many sons there is always the fear of hunger. High officials are sure to be fools, and men of talent have nowhere to use it. Few houses have every blessing, and the highest Way is always in decline. The father is thrifty and the son squanders. The wife is wise and the husband is sure to be a dolt. When the moon is full, clouds often come; when the flowers open, the wind spoils them. All things are like this. I laugh alone, and no one knows why.
有粟無人食 多男必患飢
達官必憃愚 才者無所施
家室少完福 至道常陵遲
翁嗇子每蕩 婦慧郞必癡
月滿頻値雲 花開風誤之
物物盡如此 獨笑無人知Yeoyudang jeonseo, poems, "Laughing Alone"
Frederick Douglass
1845 · United States
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, chapter 10
Henry David Thoreau
1854 · Massachusetts, USA
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
1854 · Massachusetts, USA
Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What's the news?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels.
Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"
Henry David Thoreau
1854 · Massachusetts, USA
I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.
Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"
Henry David Thoreau
1854 · Massachusetts, USA
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
Walden, "Economy"
Charles Dickens
1859 · London, England · Picturing London and Paris at the time of the French Revolution
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness …
A Tale of Two Cities, the first sentence
Multatuli
1860 · the Netherlands · Java · Answering a superior's reproach that he was in too much of a hurry
As if an honest man could sleep, and live, and enjoy himself, while those whose welfare he is called to watch over, those who are in the highest sense his neighbours, are being gagged and bled dry!
Als een eerlyk man slapen kon, en leven en genieten, zoo lang zy voor wier welzyn hy geroepen is te waken, zy die in den hoogsten zin zyn naasten zyn, worden gekneveld en uitgezogen!
Max Havelaar
Sakamoto Ryoma 坂本龍馬
June 29, 1863 · Japan at the end of the Edo shogunate
My earnest wish is to give Japan one more good washing.
日本を今一度せんたくいたし申候事ニいたすべくとの神願ニて候。Letter to his sister Sakamoto Otome (the 29th day of the 6th month, Bunkyu 3)
Abraham Lincoln
March 4, 1865 · Illinois, USA · In the spring when four years of civil war were coming to an end
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,--let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
Second Inaugural Address
John Stuart Mill
1869 · London, England
the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes--the legal subordination of one sex to the other--is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.
The Subjection of Women, chapter 1
George Eliot
1871 · Warwickshire, England · London
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
Middlemarch, chapter 20
Leo Tolstoy Лев Толстой
1875 · Russian Empire
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.Anna Karenina, the first sentence · in place of the original: the English translation by Constance Garnett (1901)
Higuchi Ichiyo 樋口一葉
1895 · Tokyo, Japan · Picturing the neighbourhood behind the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, where the children grow up
Go round to the front and the willow of backward glances at the great gate trails long; the lamps of the three-storey houses are mirrored in the Blackened-Teeth Ditch and their uproar seems close enough to touch; and from the rickshaws coming and going day and night you can guess at a prosperity beyond reckoning
廻れば大門の見返り柳いと長けれど、お齒ぐろ溝に燈火うつる三階の騷ぎも手に取る如く、明けくれなしの車の行來にはかり知られぬ全盛をうらなひてTakekurabe (Growing Up), the opening
Oscar Wilde
1897 · Ireland · Britain
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
De Profundis, the letter written in Reading Gaol
Mark Twain
1897 · Missouri, USA · Connecticut
Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Following the Equator, epigraph to chapter 66, from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar"
Kartini Raden Adjeng Kartini
May 25, 1899 · Jepara, Java · The first letter to Stella, a Dutch pen friend she had never met
I have so longed to meet a "modern girl": the proud, independent girl who has all my sympathy, who goes her way through life with quick, firm steps, cheerful and bright, full of enthusiasm and warm feeling, working not for her own good and happiness alone, but giving herself to the wider society as well, working for the good of many fellow human beings.
Ik heb zóó verlangd kennis te maken met een "modern meisje", het fiere, zelfstandige meisje, dat zoo ten volle mijne sympathie heeft, dat met vluggen, flinken tred haar weg door 't leven gaat, vroolijk en opgeruimd, vol geestdrift en warm gevoel, arbeidend niet voor eigen heil en geluk alleen, doch ook zich gevend aan de groote Maatschappij, werkend tot het heil van vele medemenschen.
Her first letter to Stella Zeehandelaar, in Door duisternis tot licht (Through Darkness into Light)
Kartini Raden Adjeng Kartini
May 25, 1899 · Jepara, Java
Love is a fairy tale in our Javanese world! How can a man and a woman love each other when they see each other for the first time in their lives after they are already well and truly bound together in marriage?
Liefde is een sprookje in onze Javaansche wereld! Hoe kunnen man en vrouw elkaar liefhebben, als zij elkaar voor 't eerst van hun leven zien, wanneer ze reeds goed en wel met elkaar door 't huwelijk verbonden zijn?
Letter to Stella Zeehandelaar
Masaoka Shiki 正岡子規
May 5, 1902 · Meiji Japan
A sickbed six feet long: this is my world. And even this six-foot sickbed is too wide for me.
病床六尺、これが我世界である。しかもこの六尺の病床が余には広過ぎるのである。A Six-Foot Sickbed (Byosho rokushaku), the first entry
Yosano Akiko 与謝野晶子
1904 · Meiji–Showa Japan · Thinking of her younger brother, with the army besieging Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War
O my brother, I weep for you. You must not die. You were the last born, and so our parents loved you most. Did our parents put a blade in your hand and teach you to kill people? Did they raise you to twenty-four to kill people and then die?
弟よ、君を泣く、
君死にたまふことなかれ。
末に生れし君なれば
親のなさけは勝りしも、
親は刄をにぎらせて
人を殺せと教へしや、
人を殺して死ねよとて
廿四までを育てしや。"You Must Not Die" (Kimi shinitamau koto nakare), in the Complete Poems of Akiko
Natsume Soseki 夏目漱石
1906 · Meiji–Taisho Japan
Work by reason alone and you grow sharp corners. Pole along the stream of feeling and you are swept away. Insist on your own will and you are cramped. Either way, the human world is a hard place to live.
智に働けば角が立つ。情に棹させば流される。意地を通せば窮屈だ。とかくに人の世は住みにくい。The novel Kusamakura (The Grass Pillow), the opening
Ishikawa Takuboku 石川啄木
1910 · Meiji Japan
On a day when every friend seems to have done better than me, I buy flowers, come home, and am tender with my wife.
友がみなわれよりえらく見ゆる日よ
花を買ひ来て
妻としたしむTanka collection A Handful of Sand (Ichiaku no suna)
Rabindranath Tagore রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর
1912 · Bengal, India · A poem that ends in a prayer that his country may awake into such a heaven of freedom. It was under British rule at the time
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth
Gitanjali 35
Franz Kafka
1915 · Prague
When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
The novella The Metamorphosis, the first sentence
Rabindranath Tagore রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর
1916 · Bengal, India
The fish in the water is silent, the animal on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing, But Man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.
Stray Birds
Wilfred Owen
1917 (published 1920) · Britain · the front in France · After seeing a soldier go down in a gas attack
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
"Dulce et Decorum Est"
Akutagawa Ryunosuke 芥川龍之介
1923 · Taisho Japan
Public opinion is always a lynching, and a lynching is always an entertainment. Even when newspaper articles are used in place of pistols.
輿論は常に私刑であり、私刑は又常に娯楽である。たといピストルを用うる代りに新聞の記事を用いたとしても。Words of a Dwarf (Shuju no kotoba), "Public Opinion"
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