the world is too much with someone

English

Etymology

In reference to The World Is Too Much with Us, a sonnet by William Wordsworth, written circa 1802.

Phrase

the world is too much with someone

1. Someone is excessively materialistic and distanced from nature.
   • 1990, Joseph Dewey, In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age, page 130:

     Aided by Alistair Fuchs-Forbes, a British lecturer and healer whom More derides mercilessly as a fag reciting "I Ching in a BBC accent" (64), Doris begins to see that the world is too much with her, that the physical is the lowest denominator of human experience. She points out to More than his abandonment of the spiritual dimension has made their marriage a burned-out star, one collapsed into itself, unable to give light, just "heavy heavy heavy" (64).

   • 1996, Christa Jungnickel, Russell K. McCormmach, Cavendish, page 68:

     The resident of London was in the center of the world; yet whenever he felt that the world was too much with him, he had only to step back out of the street to find himself inside his own house, his castle "in perfect safety from intrusion."

   • 2007, Gene Camerik, The Second Coming:

     From Monday to Saturday, the world was too much with him, and he was still too much in the world.