Nothingness Quotes - Page 11

• And somewhat as in blind night, on a mild sea, a sailor may be made aware of an iceberg, fanged and mortal, bearing invisibly near, by the unwarned charm of its breath, nothingness now revealed itself: that permanent night upon which the stars in their expiring generations are less than the glinting of gnats, and nebulae, more trivial than winter breath; that darkness in which eternity lies bent and pale, a dead snake in a jar, and infinity is the sparkling of a wren blown out to sea; that inconceivable chasm of invulnerable silence in which cataclysms of galaxies rave mute as amber.

  James Agee

  Stars, Lying, Winter

  James Agee (2008). “A Death in the Family”, p.66, Penguin

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• Nothingness haunts Being.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Existentialism

  Jean-Paul Sartre (1968). “Essays in Existentialism”

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• If such a thing called happiness exists in this world, it should be something which resembles the limitless nothingness. Nihility is having nothing and having nothing to lose. If that isn't "happiness", then what is?

  Tite Kubo

  World, Limitless, Nothing To Lose

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• For I am every dead thing In whom love wrought new alchemy For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

  John Donne

  Love, Art, Darkness

  John Donne, John Carey (2000). “John Donne: The Major Works”, p.116, Oxford University Press, USA

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• 'WHEN two lovers are making love, and if they are both no-selves, nothingness, then a spontaneous pleasurable sensation happens. Then their body energy, their whole being, loses all identity; they are no more themselves - they have fallen into abyss. But this can happen only for a moment: again they regain, again they start clinging. That's why people become afraid in love.'

  Rajneesh

  Love, Self, Two

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• Seeing into one's self-nature is seeing into nothingness. Seeing into nothingness is true seeing & eternal seeing

  Shenhui

  Freedom, Self, Inspire

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• Either death is a state of nothingness and utter consciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

  Plato

  Death, Night, Men

  Plato (1947). “The Trial and Death of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo”, p.44, Lulu.com

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• The modern tradition of equating death with an ensuing nothingness can be abandoned. For there is no reason to believe that human death severs the quality of the oneness in the universe.

  Larry Dossey

  Believe, Science, Oneness

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• Isolation and belonging are not absolute, provable states of being. They arise completely out of the nothingness within you; you measure their dimensions against your own firm or shaky sense of who you are.

  Paula Sharp

  Dimensions, Conformity, Isolation

  Paula Sharp (2000). “I Loved You All”, Hyperion

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• We have always understood that the foundations of the family, as an eternal unit, were laid even before this earth was created! Society without basic family life is without foundation and will disintegrate into nothingness.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Foundation, Earth, Life Is

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• I want to feel my own nothingness, I want to give myself up in absolute resignation to God, to lie prostrate and passive at His feet, with no other disposition in my heart than that of merging my will into His will, and no other language in my mouth than that of prayer for the perfecting of His strength in my weakness.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Christian, Prayer, Lying

  Thomas Chalmers (1847). “Daily Scripture Readings: In Three Volumes”, p.34

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• Man is in fact nailed down - like Christ on the Cross - to a grid of paradoxes. He balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious by virtue of his defeats.

  Vaclav Havel

  Men, Christ On The Cross, Knowing

  "Václav Havel: Heir to a Spiritual Legacy" by Richard L. Stanger. Christian Century article, pp.368-370, www.religion-online.org. April 11, 1990.

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• I can't understand nothingness. I can't understand it and I can't imagine it.

  Haruki Murakami

  Imagine, I Can

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “After Dark”, p.164, Random House

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• The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

  Norman Mailer

  War, Blessing, Boredom

  Norman Mailer (2003). “The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing”, p.164, Random House

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• This day's nothingness
  as if from spite
  became a flame
  and scorched the lips
  of children and poets.

  Adam Zagajewski

  Children, Flames, Lips

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• There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.

  Stephen Fry

  Depression, Wall, Black

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• It is when we come to the Lord in our nothingness, our powerlessness and our helplessness that He then enables us to love in a way which, without Him, would be absolutely impossible.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Would Be, Way, Impossible

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• Then it's goodbye, Sangsara for me Besides, girls aren't as good as they look And Samadhi is better than you think When it starts in hitting your head In with Buzz of glittergold Heaven's Angels, wailing, saying We've been waiting for you since morning, Jack Why were you so long dallying in the sooty room? This transcendental Brilliance Is the better part (of Nothingness I sing) Okay. Quit. Mad. Stop.

  Jack Kerouac

  Girl, Goodbye, Morning

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• Know that transformation sometimes begins with a fall. So never curse the fall. The ground is where humility lives. Take it. Learn it. Breathe it in. And then come back stronger, humbler and more aware of your need for Him. Come back having seen your own nothingness and His greatness.

  Yasmin Mogahed

  Fall, Humility, Greatness

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• ...mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics. Every other science, even logic, especially in its early stages, is in danger of evaporating into airy nothingness, degenerating, as the Germans say, into an arachnoid film, spun from the stuff that dreams are made of. There is no such danger for pure mathematics; for that is precisely what mathematics ought to be.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Dream, Math, Science

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1931). “Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”

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• There is no deterioration and there is no creation. There are projections, moments of existence. Each moment is perfect.

  Frederick Lenz

  Science, Perfect, Deterioration

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• Heaven and happiness do not exist. That is your parents’ way to justify the crime of having brought you into this world. What exists is reality, the tough reality, this slaughterhouse we’ve come to die in, if not to kill and to eat the animals, our fellow creatures. Therefore, do not reproduce, do not repeat the crimes committed against you, do not give back the same, evil paid with evil, as imposing life is the ultimate crime. Do not disturb the unborn, let them be in the peace of nothingness. Anyway we’ll all eventually go back there, so why beat around the bush?

  Fernando Vallejo

  Animal, Reality, Evil

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• We can only conceive of changing the self-reflection in response to our concept of self-reflection, which is predicated on our concept of self, which is a self-reflection.

  Frederick Lenz

  Reflection, Self, Response

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• My notes have a curious tendency, as I realize at last, to annihilate all they purport to record.

  Samuel Beckett

  Records, Lasts, Realizing

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.252, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Revolution calls my name. I will soon dwell in nothingness, and my name will be in the Pantheon of history.

  Georg Buchner

  Death, Names, History

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