"It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear."

William Saroyan Literature See all quotes by William Saroyan →

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More by William Saroyan

“Nobody seemed to be interested in anything except making money.”

“I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.”

“Boredom was the plague of my childhood. While I was at the orphanage, the boredom came from being in a place I did not wish to be. I was bored. I was bored the entire four years I was there.”

“Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else.”

“The bicycle is a city thing, virtually useless anywhere excepting on a pavement or hard surface of some kind. Without the road it would never have been invented. It is a little mad, both in design and purpose. Two wheels held together in a frame, with a simple mechanical system enabling a forward movement for one person.”

“To remember something or to invent something, it comes to the same thing.”

Resonant Thoughts

"They’re Mabden, of course. They are afraid of the city. Afraid of almost everything. And being permitted no weapons with which they can attack what they fear, they are reduced to what you see. It seem…"

— Michael Moorcock

Literature1939

#fear

"Do you say it is incomprehensible that there is nothingness in the world and that we are partly composed of nothing? Well, why not? Is not the whole world enveloped by nothingness? Since you concede t…"

— Cyrano de Bergerac

Literature1619–1655

#justice

"For Leopardi evil is integral to the way the world works; but when he talks of evil he does not mean any kind of malign agency of the sort that Gnostics imagined. Evil is the suffering that is built i…"

— John Gray (philosopher)

Philosophy1948

#hope

"The still more limited number of adepts who retain physical bodies remain in even closer touch with us, in order to fill certain offices, and to do certain work necessary for our evolution; and it is …"

— Charles Webster Leadbeater

occultism1854–1934

#life