Quotes about nothing
page 34

“I suppose I really seemed mad, then; but it was only through the awfulness of having said nothing but the truth, and being thought to be deluded.”

Sarah Waters book Fingersmith

Source: Fingersmith

Truth, Madness

“Sausage-Seller: You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troublous times that you line your pockets.”

Aristophanés The Knights

tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Kn.+864 ὅπερ γὰρ οἱ τὰς ἐγχέλεις θηρώμενοι πέπονθας. ὅταν μὲν ἡ λίμνη καταστῇ, λαμβάνουσιν οὐδέν· ἐὰν δ᾽ ἄνω τε καὶ κάτω τὸν βόρβορον κυκῶσιν, αἱροῦσι· καὶ σὺ λαμβάνεις, ἢν τὴν πόλιν ταράττῃς. Knights, line 864-867 Dialog aimed at the politician Cleon, symbolizing demagogues for the author. Knights (424 BC) Source: The Knights

Way, Fish, Water, Time

“Most people are blind to magic. They move through a blank and empty world. They’re bored with their lives, and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re eaten alive by longing, and they’re dead before they die.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

People, World, Dead

“Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing.”

Clive Barker book Imajica

Source: Imajica

Fear, Hope, Knowledge, Study

“It’s really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There’s a whole commotion going on inside us.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

“They were beautiful nothings”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Beauty

“What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'

'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris

God, Imagination, Idea, Passion

“Nothing but truth is immortal.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: The Ghosts and Other Lectures

Truth

“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Problem, Housing

“Nothing made sense to me anymore. I knew I was young, I knew I was small. But I was worried that I might already be ruined.”

Augusten Burroughs book A Wolf at the Table

Source: A Wolf at the Table

Sense

“Mind your own Brazilian!" The words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them. Oops.

OK. The trick when you've said something embarrassing by mistake is to pretend nothing happened.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

Flying

“When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.”

Jacqueline Susann book Valley of the Dolls

Source: Valley of the Dolls

Time

“To me, merely and pretty were words that had nothing to do with each other. Pretty went with miraculously, and merely belonged in another paragraph entirely.”

Gail Carson Levine Fairest

Source: Fairest

“There is nothing we should be quite so grateful for as the last line of the poem that goes, 'When your own heart asks.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Heart

“Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying… and every day on the balcony of the sea wings open fire is born and everything is blue again like morning.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Sea

“Jason decided there was nothing in the world scarier than a gang of bat-wielding grannies.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

World

“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

As quoted in News Journal [Mansfield, Ohio] (3 August 1965)
Attributed from posthumous publications

Money, Business, Business, For Team

“There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

People, Time

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.”

Erich Fromm The Sane Society

Source: The Sane Society

Life, Fate, Birth

“What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Hell

“We are women, and my plea is Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Women, God, Heart

“A writer wastes nothing.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

“The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Silence, Past, Future

“I know," she said. "You have a stone in your heart, and some days it's so heavy there is nothing to be done. But you don't have to be alone for it. You should have come to me. I understand.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Understanding, Heart

“nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Source: Being and Nothingness

Feeling, Thinking

“You know, if you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything, wouldn't you, at any time? And you would achieve nothing!”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Interview for Press Association (3 May 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107427 Third term as Prime Minister

Time

“people who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don't, nothing will work out the way they want.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

People, Way, Time

“As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

People, Jealousy, Reading

“memories should be sharp when one has nothing else to live for”

Zelda Fitzgerald book Save Me the Waltz

Source: Save Me the Waltz

Memory

“Your mind creates your reality. If you expect nothing, you open up the universe to give you options. If you expect the worst, you usually get it.”

James Patterson book Maximum Ride

Source: Max

Reality, Universe

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Self-Reliance

“There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Courage, Freedom, Suffering

“Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Home, Reality, Waiting

“If there is love enough, then nothing-not nature, not even death itself- can come between two who love each other.”

Philippa Gregory book The White Queen

Source: The White Queen

Love, Death, Nature

“Nothing important is completely explicable.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 3.9
Source: The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with returning to the house you grew up in every now and again. It's good for the soul.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Soul, Housing

“Nothing connects to the moment like music. I count the music to bring me back, or more precisely, to bring her forward.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

Music

“There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder
and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

“Despereaux," she whispered.
And then she shouted it, "Despereaux!"
Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.
Nothing.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Love, World, Sadness

“Acceptance means no complaining, and happiness means no complaining about the things over which you can do nothing.”

Wayne W. Dyer book Your Erroneous Zones

Source: Your Erroneous Zones

Happiness

“Think! There's nothing certain in our future! All we can hope for is a vague continuation. But in spite of that, you're going to keep on living. You can't give up on life just because it's vague. It's a question of possibilities…”

Kōji Suzuki book Ring

Source: Ring

Life, Hope, Question, Thinking

“live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested… Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1980s, Generation of Swine (1988)
Context: Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish — a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow — to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested...
Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.

Love, Drink, Sleep, Time

“Am I a man? To want you so badly that nothing else matters? To see you, and know I would sacrifice honor or family or life itself to lie wi' you, even though ye'd left me?”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Life, Lie, Family

“He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo.
Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic.
Nothing is more sublime.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

“I g-g-guess… I'm dead?" she heard her own voice call out, strangely high-pitched and thin.
For a long time, she heard nothing else. And then:
"Hi, Dead. I'm Dan.”

Peter Lerangis book The Sword Thief

Source: The Sword Thief

Time, Dead

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Propos sur le Religion no. 74 (1938), under the pen name Alain. Alternate translation: “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it's the only one we have.” IZQuotes https://izquotes.com/quote/%C3%A9mile-chartier/nothing-is-more-dangerous-than-an-idea-when-you-have-only-one-idea-390165 (retrieved 10/30/18).

Idea

“Mark my words, nothing smells worse than burned scorpion.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid