1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
1987
“Nothing ever exists entirely alone: everything is in relation to everything else!”
Source: Cosmology, philosophy and physics
1978
“There’s nothing more dangerous than a good idea.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)
“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.”
“One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.”
Source: "Playing Iron Man was hard and I dug deep: Robert Downey Jr" https://www.hindustantimes.com/hollywood/playing-iron-man-was-hard-and-i-dug-deep-robert-downey-jr/story-OOv6pvyDb8ojxc1r78g89K.html (13 December 2020)
Source: Diary entry while in Aix (c. 16 August 1824), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), pp. 52-53
Source: Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in Crystal Palace, London (24 June 1872), quoted in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), pp. 534-535
“silence serves time, for you and yourself,
though it tells nothing, it gives everything”
Source: Sweetest song I know
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
Source: The Valley of Fear
Source: Pattern Recognition
“Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.”
Lord Illingworth, Act III
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
“Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought.”
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Maxims
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations
“Friends are nothing but a known enemy”
Variant: A friend is nothing but a known enemy.
“Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing.”
Source: A Writer's Diary
“If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.”
Variant: If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 50e
Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)
Context: Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man who, like Satan, thought himself, for an instant, equal to God; but who now acknowledges, with Christian humility, that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom... There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
Source: Audition (1997), Chapter Eight, Kai
Context: The young people nowadays – men and women, amateurs and pros – generally fall into one of two categories: either they don’t know what it is that’s most important to them, or they know but don’t have the power to go after it. But this girl’s different. She knows what’s most important to her and she knows how to get it, but she doesn’t let on what it is. I’m pretty sure it’s not money, or success, or a normal happy life, or a strong man, or some weird religion, but that’s about all I can tell you. She’s like smoke:you think you’re seeing her clearly enough, but when you reach for her there’s nothing there. That’s a sort of strength, I suppose. But it makes her hard to figure out.
“The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you think you can only do a little.”
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
"As Much Truth As One Can Bear" in The New York Times Book Review (14 January 1962); republished in The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (2011), edited by Randall Kenan<!-- , also quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 114 -->
Context: Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. … Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
“I’ve always seen you, angel. From the moment you found me, I’ve seen nothing but you.”
Source: Bared to You
“Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.”
Speech given at Harrow School, Harrow, England, October 29, 1941. Quoted in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, 2008, p. 23
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches
Context: Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
Variant: In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do
“Nothing has meaning except for the meaning you give it.”
Source: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.”
Variant: Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 38, "Thinking about life", page 402 (ISBN 9780141033570).
“If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced”
Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it.
Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (February 14-May 3, 1819)
Letters (1817–1820)
Variant: Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Variant: There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
“Marriage is for noblewomen with nothing else to do.”
Source: Trickster's Choice
“Nothing can come of nothing.”
Lear, Act I, scene i.
Variant: Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
Source: King Lear (1605–6)
“Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”
"Parole de Socrate", as quoted in The Wordsworth Book of Humorous Quotations (1998), edited by C. Robertson
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
Source: Hamlet
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. V
Following the Equator (1897)
“Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens.”
Life Force (1992) Source: [Kakutani, Michiko, 1992-02-07, Books of The Times; Fallout From a Multitude of Liaisons, https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/07/books/books-of-the-times-fallout-from-a-multitude-of-liaisons.html, New York Times, 2020-02-12]
“Nothing says you're sorry like a dead bunny.”
Source: River Marked
“It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.”
Source: An Outcast of the Islands (1896), Pt. 3, Ch. 2; possibly an adaptation of a Polish proverb, "Ten się nie myli, kto nic nie robi" — "One is not wrong, who does nothing."
“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.”
Cf. Richard Dawkins (2003), A Devil's Chaplain: «There is more than just grandeur in this view of life, bleak and cold though it can seem from under the security blanket of ignorance. There is deep refreshment to be had from standing up and facing straight into the strong keen wind of understanding: Yeats's 'Winds that blow through the starry ways'.»
1920s, What I Believe (1925)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: Religion, since it has its source in terror, has dignified certain kinds of fear and made people think them not disgraceful. In this it has done mankind a great disservice: all fear is bad. I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.
Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 86, “The Fire Itself” (pp. 672-673)
“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”
Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.
Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1
Variant: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
Context: We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and — if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it — we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.
“Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.”
“Punctuality is for people with nothing better to do”
Source: Small Favor
