“I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
Source: The Bell Jar
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Sylvia Plath342
American poet, novelist and short story writer 1932–1963Related quotes
Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.”
Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
“Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.”
Haruki Murakami book After Dark
Source: After Dark
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey
As quoted in Kemalizm, Laiklik ve Demokrasi [Kemalism, Laicism and Democracy] (1994) by Ahmet Taner Kışlalı
John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar
Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, p. 197
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker
"De la Ligne" in La Difficulté d’Etre [The Difficulty of Being] (1947)
Context: What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.
“For Spinoza, philosophy originates in the very personal… feeling of emptiness”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher
Context: For Spinoza, philosophy originates in the very personal... feeling of emptiness that in the philosophical tradition has earned the distinguished name of contemptu mundi, the contempt for worldly things, or, better, vanitas.... Spinoza says that... success in life is just a postponement of failure;... pleasure is just a fleeting respite from pain; and... the objects of our striving are vain illusions....
The feeling of vanitas Spinoza describes is... a dire encounter with the prospect of descent into absolute nothingness, a life without significance coming to a meaningless end.... The experience Spinoza records... establishes... the moment of extreme doubt, fear, and uncertainty that precedes the dawn of revelation.... the journey... is one trodden by poets, philosophers, and theologians too numerous to mention, who for millennia have recorded this feeling that life is a useless passion, a wheel of ceaseless striving, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and so on.<!--pp. 55-56
Matthew Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic (2006)