“… great things may come from moments of nothingness.”

“The deepest and most organic death is death in solitude, when even light becomes a principle of death. In such moments you will be severed from life, from love, smiles, friends and even from death. And you will ask yourself if there is anything besides the nothingness of the world and your own nothingness.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

“Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

“Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

“Great sex is apocalyptic. There is no such thing as great sex unless you have an apocalyptic moment.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

“The foundation of greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment, instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

“I look now at the very moment
Even the Buddha is dumbfounded.
All turns with a swing.
I land on the plain of nothingness.”

Tetto Giko (1295–1369)

“Is this even possible today?-But some day, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting present, he must yet come to us, the redeeming man of great love and contempt, the creative spirit whose compeHing strength will not let him rest in any aloofness or any beyond, whose isolation is misunderstood by the people as if it were flight from reality-while it is only his' absorption, immersion, penetration into reality, so that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he may bring home the redemption of this reality: its redemption from the curse that the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it. This man of the future, who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell-stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and antinihilist; this victor over God and nothingness- he must come one day.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

“Perhaps the word for the feeling I mean is serenity, a high acceptance, a recognition that Heracleitus's doctrine of eternal flow is a great truth, and while we may not, in ourselves, find the moment when the one element changes into the other, that moment will come and the consciousness of its inevitability may give us courage in adversity, and balance in good fortune.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

“Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede