“I am the happiest creature in the world.”

“But ere that time he had studied to good effect, and not books alone, but the world around him too, and the world within.”

— Dante Alighieri《The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri》

“He is to be pitied, to tell the truth, in his coming into the world as a king, for he is but a man--and having to waste himself on a pack of nonsense instead of sticking to our art, in which he makes good way.”

— Alexandre Dumas《The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty》

“DEAR DICK, At what time of life may a man think himself exempted from the necessity of sacrificing his repose to the punctilios of a contemptible world?”

— Tobias Smollett《The Expedition of Humphry Clinker》

“In any case such a monster must of necessity be in our scheme of things an anomaly and an intruder, whose extirpation forms a primary duty with every man not an enemy to the world's life, health, and sanity.”

— H. P. Lovecraft《The Shunned House》

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

— J. Robert Oppenheimer《The Decision to Drop the Bomb interview》

“I thought of Scudder, of the thousand friends I had lost, of the great seas of blood and the mountains of sorrow this man and his like had made for the world.”

— John Buchan《Mr. Standfast》

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

— Oscar Wilde《The Soul of Man under Socialism》

“How strange it is, that a fool or a knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty!”

— Ann Radcliffe《The Mysteries of Udolpho》

“Advocates and magistrates, reporters and men of the world, actresses and society women were crowded together on the benches provided for the public.”

— Maurice Leblanc《The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar》

“The friend praying at her side was forgotten, the world had vanished, every law of reason was annihilated, all knowledge was out of her mind--every hard-won conquest of human empiricism was effaced.”

— Wilhelmine von Hillern《On the Cross: A Romance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau》

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

— Oscar Wilde《The Picture of Dorian Gray》

“But nature itself, she thought, would be no better than a vast blank, if the mind of the observer did not supply it with an animating soul.”

— William Godwin《Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman》