Quotes about nothing
page 37

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.”

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) German jurist, political theorist and professor of law

Source: Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty

Life

“A world of contradictions, wherein everything is gray and almost nothing is black and white.”

David Sheff Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Source: Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

World

“Nothing that ever happens is so unimportant that it doesn't change things.”

David Eddings book Polgara the Sorceress

Source: Polgara the Sorceress

Change

“Llarimar had told him to do his best. That sounded like an awful lot of work. Unfortunately, doing nothing was beginning to seem like even MORE work.”

Brandon Sanderson book Warbreaker

Source: Warbreaker

“Maybe there was a magic stronger than spells. Maybe the soulmate principle was responsible, and if two people were meant to be together, nothing could keep them apart.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

People

“Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.”

Charles Bukowski book Hot Water Music

Source: Hot Water Music

Life

“… nothing wonderful lasted forever. Joy was as fleeting as a shooting star that crossed the evening sky, ready to blink out at any moment.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Star, Joy

“Sir Topher finally looked up. “Because any hope beyond that, my boy, would be too much. I feared we would drown in it.”
"Then I choose to drown,” Finnikin said. “In hope. Rather than float into nothing.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Fear, Hope, Boy

“In many cases, our need to wonder about or be told what God wants in a certain situation is nothing short of a clear indication of how little we are engaged in His work.”

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) American philosopher

Source: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God

God

“He runs to the sink to spit it out. I grin. There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

“Because in the end nothing is worse than seeing the fall of one you loved. It was somehow worse than losing a love. It made everything seem questionable. It made the past bitter and confused.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Fall of the Hotel Dumort

Love, Question, Past

“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Men, Money, World, Mountain

“I leave the world in terrible turmoil. I come back, same turmoil. Nothing at all different. Well, outfits are a little different…”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Source: Astonishing X-Men, Volume 1: Gifted

World

“So once you're dead there's just nothing?
Mari: Basically…
Korogi: I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff. I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It's so much easier to just believe in reincarnation.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Thinking, Dead

“Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

Motivation

“We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now.”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Daughter of the Blood

People, Evil

“Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Time

“The mind-is not the heart.
I may yet live, as I know others live,
To wish in vain to let go with the mind-
Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me
That I need learn to let go with the heart.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Sleep, Learning, Heart, Night

“Nothing provokes speculation more than the sight of a woman enjoying herself." -”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

“Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Pain

“There is nothing like love. You should try it.”

Thibault shrugged. “Maybe one day.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Love

“Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.”

Chuck Barris (1929–2017) American game show creator, producer, and host

Source: You and Me, Babe

Feeling, Effort

“Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Wherever You Are, Enlightenment Is There (page127)
Not Always So, practicing the true spirit of Zen (2002)

Reality, Perfection

“A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded gun on your coffee table- There's nothing wrong with them, but it's hard to stop thinking about.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Girl, Coffee, Thinking

“Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.”

Maya Angelou book Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

“For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Variant: Look up at the stars and you're gone.
Source: Fight Club

Star

“I had nothing to fear from my father.
Except his disappointment.
Which was no small thing.”

Barbara Delinsky (1945) American writer

Source: Escape

Fear, Disappointment

“You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are avenged 1440 times a day.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Epigrams

Time

“It was strange, how readily authority could be conjured with nothing but a bit of strutting jackassery.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 13 “Orchids and Assassins” section 4 (p. 567)

“Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

“Nothing is ever certain.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

“That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

Source: From Here to Eternity

“It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Personality

“Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 13: Leiden

History, Idea, Drink, Wine

“There is nothing known as "Perfect". Its only those imperfections which we choose not to see!!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Perfection

“These wrinkles are nothing
These gray hairs are nothing,
This stomach which sags
with old food, these bruised
and swollen ankles,
my darkening brain,
they are nothing.
I am the same boy
my mother used to kiss.”

Mark Strand (1934–2014) Canadian-American poet, essayist, translator

Food, Boy, Kiss

“How is Ty? There is nothing wrong with Ty, but he is different, and the Clave hates all that is different. They will try to punish him, for being who he is. They would punish a star for burning.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Bitter of Tongue

Hate, Star

“Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Death

“Time apparently did nothing but blunt grief’s sharpest edge so that it hacked rather than sliced.”

Stephen King book Lisey's Story

Source: Lisey's Story

Time

“But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I’m nearly out of my mind.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Truth, Thinking

“Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Thinking

“To shut you eyes is to guess nothing of blindness.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

“If you set out to be liked, you will accomplish nothing.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

“It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Pain, Happiness, Peace, Feeling

“There is nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing more dangerous.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Victory

“…tomorrow was her birthday, and she was thinking how fast the years went by, how old she was getting, and how little she seemed to have accomplished. Almost twenty-five and nothing to show for it.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Birthday, Thinking

“There's nothing more prized to a man than something he had to wait for, work for, or strugle a little bit to get.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart

Waiting

“Like is an emotion. Emotions”—he raised a hand, made a fist, clenched it tightly—“are like holding water. You open your hand, there’s nothing there. Better to be a weapon than a woman.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Water

“I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

Understanding

“It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

As quoted in TIME magazine when "asked if she really had nothing on in the photograph [for a 1949 calendar]" ("Something for the Boys." Time 60, no. 6 (August 11, 1952): 90)
Variant: I had the radio on.

Funny

“It is a horrible, terrible thing, the worst thing, to watch somebody you love die right in front of you and not be able to do nothing about it.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Source: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Love

“Nothing happens until something moves.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Maybe there's nothing impossible tonight. We're down the hole to Wonderland, and no White Rabbit to guide us."
If I remember correctly, the White Rabbit was an unreliable guide, anyway.”

Dean Koontz book The Taking

Source: The Taking

“I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Life, Home, Bird

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Education, Reading

“You occupied my space. But because you were not in my present, when I looked into my future I saw… nothing. Isn't that sad? And stupid?”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Stupidity, Sadness, Future

“What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

Dreams, Evil

“There’s nothing wrong with not looking like something. It just means you don’t fit the stereotype yet.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“Neither you nor I can know your destiny. You may never know it! Destiny isn't always like a party at the end of the evening. Sometimes it's nothing more than struggling through life from day to day.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Life

“Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

Books

“I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love

“Sometimes the most intelligent thing is not to do anything, certainly nothing loaded with the imbecility of emotionality.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Source: Madness in the Family: Stories

Intelligence

“Your heart literally hurts when it's breaking. You can feel it, every beat another ache, and nothing you can do will stop it, either from beating or breaking.”

Alison McGhee (1960) American novelist

Source: All Rivers Flow To The Sea

Feeling, Heart, Hurt

“Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

Source: The Magician King

People, Nature, Effort

“Nothing that can be, can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Hope

“… if you feel everything intensely, ultimately you feel nothing at all.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Feeling

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

“Once you'd resolved to go, there was nothing to it at all.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

“It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends.”

Sinclair Lewis book Arrowsmith

Source: Arrowsmith (1925), Ch. 20

“Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

“There is nothing more precious than laughter”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Source: The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

Laughter

“He looked at her then, and she could see he wasn't afraid.
"Nothing really dies as long as it's not forgotten," he said.”

L.J. Smith The Forbidden Game

Source: The Forbidden Game

“It's the same with men as with horses and dogs, nothing wants to die.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Men, Dogs, Horse

“Am I odd? Is there something wrong with me, like Mrs. Tifton Said?"

Skye knelt down on the wet grass and looked straight into Batty's eyes. "No you stupid idiot, there's nothing wrong. with you.”

Jeanne Birdsall (1951) American children's writer

Source: The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

Stupidity, Grass

“Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won't let them because there's nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking. Same thing with kids. Keep 'em busy or they might start thinking.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Source: Teacher Man

World, Business, Thinking, Sun

“Nay, it's not the Devil been leading her astray. It's books! That girl has been nothing but trouble ever since she learned how to read.”

Anya Seton book The Winthrop Woman

Source: The Winthrop Woman

Books, Girl, Learning, Reading

“I am nothing but a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Volume II [Tauchnitz,
Source: The Woman in White (1859)

“But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.”

Ron Rash (1953) American poet, short story writer and novelist

Source: One Foot in Eden

Life, Books, History, Reading

“Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Love, Anger

“Embrace the probability of your imminent death…. and know there is nothing i can do to save you.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Death

“Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Art

“I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received.”

Amy Tan The Hundred Secret Senses

Source: The Hundred Secret Senses

Love

“It was his subconscious which told him this — that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 17

Parting, Personality

“Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Alcohol

“When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Attributed
Source: Les Essais

Books, Help

“And that, my young friends, is the story of our country, one invader after another. Macedonians. Sassanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Cab Driver, p. 146
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Country

“Nothing reaches inside you and grabs you by the guts the way fear does.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: A Killing Frost

Fear, Way

“When love exists, nothing else matters, not life’s predicaments, not the fury of the years, not a physical winding down or scarcity of opportunity.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Love, Life

“There is nothing more valuable than the printed word.”

Margaret Peterson Haddix (1964) American author

“Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

Failure, Heart

“That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.”

Robin Hobb book Ship of Destiny

Source: Ship of Destiny

Life, Learning

“He knew I'd seen everything in that alley, that I'd stood there and done nothing. He knew that I'd betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Time

“Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Truth

“People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Love, People, World

“Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their loves. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that care nothing for hope or longing.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Love, People, Hope, Thinking

“I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Life, Dreams, Mountain, Change

“One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.”

Steven Erikson book House of Chains

Source: House of Chains

“Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

People, Change

Quotes about nothing page 37

Quotes about nothing
page 37