Quotes about nothing
page 9

“The worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

Motivational, Success

“Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

“Nothing is lost… Everything is transformed.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

“Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Life, Truth, Forgiveness

“If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Source: Night and Day

Feeling, Reality, Personality

“I may not be old but I’m too old to have this much nothing”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

“but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Variant: Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Life, Stupidity, Way

“The past is so much safer, because whatever's in it has already happened. It can't be changed; so, in a way, there's nothing to dread.”

Margaret Atwood book The Heart Goes Last

Source: The Heart Goes Last

Way, Change, Past

“Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.”

Tennessee Williams Camino Real

Source: Camino Real

“I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

World

“Eternal tourists of ourselves, there is no landscape but what we are. We possess nothing, for we don’t even possess ourselves. We have nothing because we are nothing. What hand will I reach out, and to what universe? The universe isn’t mine: it’s me.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Universe

“Wir sind nichts; was wir suchen ist alles. (We are nothing; what we search for is everything.)”

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) German poet

“That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, 'Cant do is like Dont Care.' Neither of them have a home.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Home, Failure, Time

“The proletarians have nothing to loose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

Karl Marx book The Communist Manifesto

Section 4, paragraph 11 (last paragraph)
Variant translation: Workers of the world, unite!
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
Variant: The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
Source: The Communist Manifesto
Context: The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

World

“In times like the present men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)

Men, Time

“when your down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Dreams

“My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.”

Brennan Manning book The Ragamuffin Gospel

p. 11 https://books.google.com/books?id=sUTZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11 <br class="br">Source: 1990s, The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990)

Love, Christ

“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Teachers

“At one and the same time, therefore, society is everything and society is nothing. Society is the most powerful concoction in the world and society has no existence whatsoever”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

World, Time

““Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss….” He turned to me. “But every once in a while you find someone who's iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.””

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped (2001)

“Nothing he said could change what I think of you. I've had my mind made up about you for a long time… and it's all good.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Thinking, Change, Time

“Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

“To THINK BIG and to use our talents doesn't mean we won't have difficulties along the way. We will—we all do. How we view those problems determines how we end up. If we choose to see the obstacles in our path as barriers, we stop trying. “We can't win,” we moan. “They won't let us win.”However, if we choose to see the obstacles as hurdles, we can leap over them. Successful people don't have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.Whatever direction we choose, if we can realize that every hurdle we jump strengthens and prepares us for the next one, we're already on the way to success.”

Ben Carson book Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 232

People, Way, Problem, Thinking

“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“Pardon me I've got nothing to say.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life, Search

“… they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Lying

“You lose nothing when fighting for a cause… In my mind the losers are those who don't have a cause they care about.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Fight

“To accomplish nothing and die of the strain”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
Variant: To have accomplished nothing and to die overworked.

“Nothing can last forever. There isn't any memory, no matter how intense, that doesn't fade out at last.”

Juan Rulfo (1917–1986) Mexican writer

Memory

“I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Lady Bracknell, Act I
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“There is nothing to fear except fear it's self.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Fear

“Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.”

Yukio Mishima book Sun and Steel

Source: Sun and Steel

Life, Thinking

“The spiritual experience of the philosopher is the nourishing soil of philosophy; that without it there is no philosophy; and that, even so, spiritual experience does not, or must not, enter into the intelligible texture of philosophy. The pulp of the fruit must consist of nothing but the truth.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Source: Existence & the Existent

Truth, Intelligence

“The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you.”

Marina Abramović (1946) Yugoslav-American artist

“I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act I
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Love, Funny

“We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things…”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“But now," says the Once-ler, "now that you're here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”

Dr. Seuss The Lorax

Source: The Lorax

“Reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Art, Communication, Reality

“Nothing is trivial.”

James O'Barr The Crow

Source: The Crow

“There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Source: Anthem (1937)

Men, Freedom

“Life (as you call it) is an opportunity for you to know experientially what you already know conceptually. You need learn nothing to do this. You need merely remember what you already know, and act on it.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Source: Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1

Life, Learning

“Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Leadership

“The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Love, Life, Heart Touching

“To love is simply to allow another to be, live, grow, expand, become. An appreciation that demands and expects nothing in return.”

Kate Millett (1937–2017) American writer and activist

Source: Sita

Love

“Nothing is fair. The most one can hope is for things to be logical. Justice is a rare illness in a world that is otherwise a picture of health.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Health, World, Justice, Hope

“They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Children, Nature

“Mad Hatter: Would you like a little more tea?
Alice: Well, I haven't had any yet, so I can't very well take more.
March Hare: Ah, you mean you can't very well take less.
Mad Hatter: Yes. You can always take more than nothing.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

Tea, Madness

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Freedom, Dependency

“All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Source: Letter from an Unknown Woman: The Fowler Snared

“They wouldn't fire me. Even the salesmen liked me. They were robbing the boss out the back door but I didn't say anything. That was their little game. It didn't interest me. I wasn't much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Variant: I wasn't much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing."
Source: Post Office (1971)

World

“I have seen so many extraordinary things, nothing seems extraordinary any more”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“Always believe in yourself. Do this and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Fear

“I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think about nothing else.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Thinking

“Where there is nothing, there is God.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

God, For Men, For Parents, For Father

“It has always seemed to me that my existence consisted purely and exclusively of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense.”

Thomas Ligotti book Teatro Grottesco

Source: Teatro Grottesco

“I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

Source: My Name is Red

“There is nothing impossible with God. All the impossibility is with us when we measure God by the limitations of our unbelief.”

Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947) British evangelist

Source: Ever Increasing Faith

God

“Nothing we do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

Change, Past, Future

“One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it-- it was the black kitten's fault entirely.”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Dinner was soon followed by tea and coffee, a ten miles' drive home allowed no waste of hours; and from the time of their sitting down to table, it was a quick succession of busy nothings till the carriage came to the door, and Mrs. Norris, having fidgeted about, and obtained a few pheasants' eggs and a cream cheese from the housekeeper, and made abundance of civil speeches to Mrs. Rushworth, was ready to lead the way.
Misattributed
Source: Said by Fanny Price in a 1999 adaptation of Mansfield Park. Actual quote:

Life, Business, Success, Sad

“Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of form a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast - or else there is nothing at all.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

Heart

“The idea occurred to him when he was twenty. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming — what should I do? — with an answer taking shape: nothing.”

Georges Perec (1936–1982) French writer

Idea, Question

“Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Statement (28 August 1965) after meeting Elvis Presley, as quoted in The Leading Men of MGM (2005) by Jane Ellen Wayne, p. 386; also partly quoted in The Beatles: The Authorized Biography (1968) by Hunter Davies, p. 19<br>It was a load of rubbish. It was like meeting Engelbert Humperdinck.<br>Later comments on meeting Elvis, as quoted in The Beatles: The Biography (2005) by Bob Spitz, p. 583. <br class="br">Context: There's only one person in the United States we ever wanted to meet … not that he wanted us. And we met him last night. We can't tell you how we felt. We just idolised him so much. … You can't imagine what a thrill that was last night. Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles.

“There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Death, People, Truth, Books

“Nothing has really happened unless it's been described [in words].”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

People, Feeling, Intelligence, Thinking

“Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

World

“There was a time when time did not yet exist. … The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Birth, Nostalgia, Time

“Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize.”

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) American photographer and author

Source: Arbus, Diane, Five Photographs by Diane Arbus, Artforum, May 1971, 9, 9, https://www.artforum.com/print/197105, 13 November 2018

“There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

B 730; Variant translation: All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
Variant: All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
Source: Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Understanding, Knowledge, Sense

“No one and nothing can harm us, child, except what we fear and love.”

Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) Norwegian writer

Source: The Wreath

Love, Fear

“Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.
Immanuel Kant”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

“Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.”

Giacomo Leopardi book Zibaldone

Source: Zibaldone (2013) trans. Kathleen Baldwin et al., [527] ISBN 978-0374296827

Men, Children

“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Friendship, Missing You, Goodbye, For Friend

“the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.”

Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

Sense

“To hell with them. Nothing hurts if you don't let it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Hell, Hurt

“I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

World, Help

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym‎ [O Demônio e a srta Prym] (2000), p. x; this has also been misquoted as "A moment is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny."
Context: When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.

Life, Courage, Change, Courageous

“But what about the End of the Universe? We'll miss the big moment."
I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod,"nothing but a gnab gib."
A what?"
Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Universe

“The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

“There is nothing so annoying as having two people talking when you're busy interrupting.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

People, Business

“It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.
And men take care that they should.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Women, Men

“You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Water, Time

“Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Happiness, Pleasure, Age

“I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Children, World, Soul

“for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Part I, Ch. 9
Source: To the Lighthouse (1927)
Context: Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscription on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs Ramsay's knee.

Men, Knowledge

“You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.”

Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) American dancer

Love, Feeling, Dance, Painting

“I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Pain, Business, Tree, Learning

“Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Source: The Art of Poetry

Happiness, Error, Nature

“She leaned into me, and when I closed my eyes, I knew I wanted nothing more than to hold her this way forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Way

“He who has nothing—it has been said many times—has nothing to lose but his chains.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Time

“To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Variant: It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.
Source: Les Misérables

“There is nothing more ancient than the truth.”

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

Truth

“Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose- a point on which the soul can focus its intellectual eye”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Robert Walton in "Letter 1"
Source: Frankenstein (1818)
Context: I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

Soul

“Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Source: Recollections on the French Revolution

Envy

“Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Quotes about nothing page 9

Quotes about nothing
page 9