“Nothing can come out of nothing, any more than a thing can go back to nothing.”
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV, 4
“Nothing can come of nothing.”
Lear, Act I, scene i.
Variant: Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
Source: King Lear (1605–6)
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William Shakespeare 699
English playwright and poet 1564–1616Related quotes
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p 1
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Context: Nothing can be said: nothing sure, nothing probable, nothing honest. Better to err through omission than through commission: better to refrain from steering the fate of others, since it is already so difficult to navigate one's own.
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The Lost Symbol
Source: The Lost Symbol
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Charles Frederick Webber
(1825–1863) American soldier killed in action
Charles Frederick Webber interviewed at a field hospital following the Battle of Gettysburg. He was holding his hand, from which the ends of four fingers had been shot off. He was smoking his pipe with with no sense of urgency and was allowing more wounded soldiers to go ahead of him. He died on July 19, 1863, 13 days after the wound, from the subsequent infection.
Quote
Source: [The Wounded, New York Herald, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/New_York_Herald/1863/The_Wounded, July 6 1863]
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May Sarton
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“Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.”
Abraham Cowley
(1618–1667) British writer
Book I, lines 361-362
See also "One of our poets (which is it?) speaks of an everlasting now", Robert Southey, The Doctor, chap. xxv. p. 1
Davideis (1656)
“We come from nothing, we are going back to nothing-In the end what have we lost? Nothing!”
Graham Chapman
(1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor