Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
Source: Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946), p. 58
Quotes about nothing page 8
“Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.”
Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet
"The Parent"; paraphrased variants:
Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
Happy Days (1933)
“There’s nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book.”
Betty MacDonald (1908–1958) writer
Source: Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic
“Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.”
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
Source: Pensées
“I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.”
Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Nothing is really so very frightening when everything is so very dangerous”
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays
“About me, nothing worse they will tell you, my love, than what I told you”
Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet
Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer
Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
“Feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.”
Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer
Source: Midnight Bayou
“God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Mauvaises Pensées et Autres (1941)
Variant: Life... is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Source: Macbeth
“Nothing is stronger than habit.”
Nil adsuetudine maius.
Ovid book Ars amatoria
Variant translation: Nothing is more powerful than custom.
Book II, line 345
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
“There’s nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.”
Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist
“Hate is too mild of a word. But it's nothing personal, I don't think.”
Gena Showalter (1975) American writer
Source: Alice in Zombieland
Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography
Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?
“Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature”
Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist
Laboratory journal entry #10,040 (19 March 1849); published in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) Vol. II, edited by Henry Bence Jones https://archive.org/stream/lifelettersoffar02joneiala#page/248/mode/2up/search/wonderful,p.248.This has sometimes been quoted partially as "Nothing is too wonderful to be true," and can be seen engraved above the doorway of the south entrance to the Humanities Building at UCLA in Los Angeles, California. http://lit250v.library.ucla.edu/islandora/object/edu.ucla.library.universityArchives.historicPhotographs%3A67 <br class="br">Context: ALL THIS IS A DREAM. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency.
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President
David Eddings (1931–2009) American novelist
Source: Sorceress of Darshiva
Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram
Source: Shantaram
“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
Winston S. Churchill book The Story of the Malakand Field Force
The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter X.
Early career years (1898–1929)
Variant: There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.
“Nothing comes from without; all things come from within - from the subconscious”
Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer
Source: Resurrection
Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist
November 10, 1963
This was said before Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and as he himself stated, before he truly understood Islam.
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)
“She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.”
Jean Paul Sartre book The Words
The Words (1964), speaking of his grandmother.
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 13; Unsourced variant: Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Context: Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you'll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENNESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.
“If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing… then you are a writer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer
“The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“Nothing has to be true forever. Just for long enough.”
Terry Pratchett book The Truth
Source: The Truth
“Nothing is going to change, unless someone does something soon”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
“By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.”
Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay
A Short History of Decay (1949)
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer
As quoted in Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990) by Sy Safransky, p. 42
Muhammad Ali book The Soul of a Butterfly
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey
“Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Nothing sets a Christian so much out of the devil's reach than humility.”
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian
Source: Macbeth, Act V, scene v.
Context: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
J'accuse! (1898)
Context: These military tribunals have, decidedly, a most singular idea of justice.
This is the plain truth, Mr. President, and it is terrifying. It will leave an indelible stain on your presidency. I realise that you have no power over this case, that you are limited by the Constitution and your entourage. You have, nonetheless, your duty as a man, which you will recognise and fulfill. As for myself, I have not despaired in the least, of the triumph of right. I repeat with the most vehement conviction: truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. Today is only the beginning, for it is only today that the positions have become clear: on one side, those who are guilty, who do not want the light to shine forth, on the other, those who seek justice and who will give their lives to attain it. I said it before and I repeat it now: when truth is buried underground, it grows and it builds up so much force that the day it explodes it blasts everything with it. We shall see whether we have been setting ourselves up for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come.
“And nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo
"Why I Am So Wise", 6
Ecce Homo (1888)
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
Preface
1910s, The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)
Variant: A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Context: Attention and activity lead to mistakes as well as to successes; but a life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.