Nothingness Quotes - Page 18

• You may be going through things right now that are painfully preparing you for some precious service to Jesus and to his people. When a person strikes rock bottom with a sense of nothingness or helplessness, he may find that he has struck the Rock of Ages

  John Piper

  Jesus, Rocks, People

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• And we, inhabitants of the great coral of the Cosmos, believe the atom (which still we cannot see) to be full matter, whereas, it too, like everything else, is but an embroidery of voids in the Void, and we give the name of being, dense and even eternal, to that dance of inconsistencies, that infinite extension that is identified with absolute Nothingness and that spins from its own non-being the illusion of everything.

  Umberto Eco

  Believe, Names, Giving

  Umberto Eco (2006). “The Island of the Day Before”, p.487, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Healthy mysticism praises acts of letting go, of being emptied, of getting in touch with the space inside and expanding this until it merges with the space outside. Space meeting space; empty pouring into empty. Births happen from that encounter with emptiness, nothingness. . . . Let us not fight emptiness and nothingness, but allow it to penetrate us even as we penetrate it.

  Matthew Fox

  Letting Go, Fighting, Space

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• Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it.

  Leon Bloy

  Doe, Weak, Source

  Léon Bloy, Jeanne Molbech Bloy (1937). “Letters to His Fiancée”

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• Anything made out of destructible matter Infinite time would have devoured before. But if the atoms that make and replenish the world Have endured through the immense span of the past Their natures are immortal-that is clear. Never can things revert to nothingness!

  Lucretius

  Science, Past, Infinite Time

  Titus Lucretius Carus, Anthony M. Esolen (1995). “De rerum natura”, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

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• Mothers born on relief have their babies on relief. Nothingness, truly, seems to be the condition of these New York people. They are nomads going from one rooming house to another, looking for a toilet that functions.

  Elizabeth Hardwick

  Mother, Baby, New York

  Elizabeth Hardwick (2017). “The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick”, p.107, New York Review of Books

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• Growing in grace is a deepening realization of our nothingness; it is a heartfelt recognition that we are not worthy of the least of God's mercies.

  Arthur W. Pink

  Grace, Heartfelt, Realization

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• The search for happiness ... always ends in the ghastly sense of the bottomless nothingness into which you will inevitably fall if you strain any further.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Happiness, Fall, Ends

  D. H. Lawrence, Dieter Mehl (2002). “The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird”, p.69, Cambridge University Press

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• People who need to possess the physical copy of a book, and not merely an electronic version, are in some sense mysteics. We believe that the objects themselves are sacred, not just the stories they tell. We believe that books possess the power to transubstantiate, to turn darkness into light, to make being out of nothingness.

  Joe Queenan

  Believe, Book, Light

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• What is next to ecstasy?
  Pain.
  What is next to pain?
  Nothingness.
  What is next to nothingness?
  Hell.

  Umera Ahmed

  Pain, Next, Hell

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• I've heard it said that grace is God reaching God's hands into the world. And the Bible tells us that we are part of the body of Christ, that if we let the Spirit move through us, we can become the hands of Christ on earth. Hands that heal, bless, unite, and love. I'd like to think God's hands are a bit like Grace's man hands—gentle but big, busy, and tough. God's hands are those of a creator—an artist who molded and shaped the universe out of a void, who hewed matter from nothingness.

  Cathleen Falsani

  Moving, Men, Thinking

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• You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

  Samuel Butler

  Faith, Motivation, Littles

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4356, Delphi Classics

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• Joy is a marvelous increasing of what exists, a pure addition out of nothingness.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Joy, Marvelous, Pure

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). “The Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus: A Dual Language Edition”, p.240, Vintage

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• When you unite the nothingness of your mind with the nothingness of the Frisbee, then the Frisbee is not a Frisbee, and you are not you.

  Frederick Lenz

  Health, Buddhism, Mind

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• I think nearly every artist continually wants to reach the edge of nothingness - the point where you can’t go any further.

  Harry Callahan

  Photography, Artist, Thinking

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• Life demands sacrifice and difficult decisions from us at every moment. Living does not mean passing through a void of nothingness but rather through a web of relationships among beings, each with their own weight and volume and texture.

  Shin Kyung-sook

  Mean, Sacrifice, Decision

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• Hell is more bearable than nothingness.

  Philip James Bailey

  Evil, Hell, Bearable

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.36

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• May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is the Father, Son and Spirit.

  Brennan Manning

  Children, Father, Son

  Brennan Manning (2015). “Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”, p.17, NavPress

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• In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.

  Miyamoto Musashi

  Evil, Principles, Way

  Miyamoto Musashi, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Inazo Nitobe (2010). “Honor: Samurai Philosophy of Life - The Essential Samurai Collection; The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, Bushido: The Soul of Japan.”, p.45, Bottom of the Hill

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• I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.

  Daniel Keyes

  Fear, Life Or Death, Ifs

  David Rogers, Daniel Keyes (1969). “Flowers for Algernon: One Act”, p.28, Dramatic Publishing

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• That we may merge into the deep and dazzling darkness, vanish into it, dissolve in it forever in an unbelievable bliss beyond imagination, for absolute nothingness represents absolute bliss.

  Gregory of Nyssa

  Spiritual, Imagination, Forever

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• Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Book, Love You

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