Quotes & Sayings About Being Nothing To Something

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grapsed, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearnace as a man, he humbled himself and becamse obedient to death-even death on a cross! — Paul The Apostle

You do learn things and one of them is that happiness has nothing to do with validation from other people, the important thing is being happy with yourself ... finding something that is important to you and sticking with it no matter what anyone says. The truth is you've got to really be tough because there are all kinds of forces that are always trying to get you to do things their way ... trying to tell you that you are throwing your life away if you don't follow their advice. — Kurt Cobain

It's a serious character weakness to think you can get something of value for little or nothing, to believe that life will flood you with abundance when you won't commit yourself to delivering your best contribution in exchange. In fact, it's a safe bet that you'll subconsciously sabotage yourself from being in such a place for long. You won't allow yourself to receive what you don't feel you've earned. To receive life's bounty, you must know without a doubt that you deserve it. — Steve Pavlina

They know they're supposed to do something, but they're not sure what. And you know what they do when they're not sure
of course you do: They either do the wrong thing or they do nothing, and it's a toss up as to which is worse. — Jill Conner Browne

One of my practices comes from an ancient Indian teacher. He taught that when you experience some tragic situation, think about it. If there's no way to overcome the tragedy, then there is no use worrying too much. So I practice that. (The Dalai Lama was referring to the eighth-century Buddhist master Shantideva, who wrote, "If something can be done about the situation, what need is there for dejection? And if nothing can be done about it, what use is there for being dejected?") — Dalai Lama XIV

Writing, music, sculpting, painting, and prayer! These are the three things that are most closely related! Writers, musicians, sculptors, painters, and the faithful are the ones who make things out of nothing. Everybody else, they make things out of something, they have materials! But a written work can be done with nothing, it can begin in the soul! A musical piece begins with a harmony in the soul, a sculpture begins with a formless, useless piece of rock chiseled and formed and molded into the thing that was first conceived in the sculptor's heart! A painting can be carried inside the mind for a lifetime, before ever being put onto paper or canvass! And a prayer! A prayer is a thought, a remembrance, a whisper, a communion, that is from the soul going to what cannot be seen, yet it can move mountains! And so I believe that these five things are interrelated, these five kinds of people are kin. — C. JoyBell C.

In our profession someone can be very brilliant and acquire total technical mastery. Yet in the last resort, the only thing that really counts is his quality as a human being. For music is created by Man for Man. And if someone sees nothing more than notes in it, this can perhaps be very interesting, but it cannot enrich him. And music should exist for one purpose only; to enrich Man and give him something he has lost in most respects. — Herbert Von Karajan

It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don't have to start with anything. — Andrea Jung

Do I believe a thing has limits!? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn't have limits. Existence means there's always something else, and so everything has limits. Why is it so hard to conceive that a thing is a thing, and that it isn't always being some other thing that's beyond it?"

At that moment I felt in my bones not that I was talking to a man, but to another universe. I tried one last time, from another angle, which I felt compelled to consider legitimate.

"Look, Caeiro... think about numbers... Where do they end? Take any number - say 34. Past it we have 35, 36, 37, 38 - there can be no end to it. There is no number so big that there is no number larger..."

"But that's just numbers," protested my master Caeiro.

And then, looking at me out of his formidable, childlike eyes:

"What is 34 in Reality, anyway? — Alvaro De Campos

if we suppose that God, being supremely powerful, supremely wise, and supremely loving, can achieve, and will settle for nothing less than, perfect justice, then we must also suppose that he will settle for nothing less than a full atonement for sin - something that will actually make up for, or cancel out, sin; and as we have seen, punishment (in and of itself) has no power to do that. — Thomas Talbott

Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary, and adopt a new form. The phrase being born is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while dying means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sums of things remains unchanged. — Ovid

In the evenings in bed, with the light out, I tried to picture death, the "most nothing of all." In imagination I suppressed all the circumstances of my life and I felt gripped in ever tighter circles of panic. There was no longer any "I." What is it after all, "I"? ...Then one night, a marvelous idea came to me: Instead of just submitting to this panic, I would try to observe it, to see where it is, what it is. I perceived then that it was
connected to a contraction in my stomach, a little under my ribs, and also in my throat...I forced myself to unclench, to relax my stomach. The panic disappeared ... when I tried again to think about death, instead of being gripped by the claws of panic I was filled by an entirely new feeling, whose name I did not know, something between mystery and hope."
-Mount Analogue, Rene Daumal — Rene Daumal

What is the difference between "creator" and "craftsman"? The one who creates bestows being itself, he brings something out of nothing - ex nihilo sui et subiecti, as the Latin puts it - and this, in the strict sense, is a mode of operation which belongs to the Almighty alone. The craftsman, by contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he gives form and meaning. — Pope John Paul II

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason
if the worlds are in any way blurred
the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. — Raymond Carver

Smokers always waxed poetic about the ritual of it, how a large part of the satisfaction was packing the box and pulling the foil wrapper and plucking an aromatic stick. They claimed they loved the lighting, the ashing, the feeling of being able to hold something between their fingers. That was all well and good, but there was nothing quite like actually smoking it: Leigh loved inhaling. To pull with your lips on that filter and feel the smoke drift across your tongue, down your throat, and directly into your lungs was to be transported momentarily to nirvana. She remembered- every day- how it felt after the first inhale, just as the nicotine was hitting her bloodstream. A few seconds of both tranquility and alertness, together, in exactly the right amounts. Then the slow exhale- forceful enough so that the smoke didn't merely seep from your mouth but not so energetic that it disrupted the moment- would complete the blissful experience. — Lauren Weisberger

Being a vampire for him meant revenge. Revenge against life itself. Every time he took a life it was revenge. It was no wonder, then, that he appreciated nothing. The nuances of vampire existence weren't even available to him because he was focused with a maniacal vengeance upon the mortal life he'd left. Consumed with hatred, he looked back. Consumed with envy, nothing pleased him unless he could take it from others; and once having it, he grew cold and dissatisfied, not loving the thing for itself; and so he went after something else. Vengeance, blind and sterile and contemptible. — Anne Rice

You are feeling sad? Befriend it. Have compassion for it. Sadness also has a being. Allow it, embrace it, sit with it, hold hands with it. Be friendly. Be in love with it. Sadness is beautiful! Nothing is wrong with it. Who told you that something is wrong in being sad? In fact, only sadness gives you depth. Laughter is shallow; happiness is skin-deep. Sadness goes to the very bones, to the marrow. Nothing goes as deep as sadness. — Osho

It's not going to be that hard to be in Heaven, or the Heavenly City or the Millennium, but you're going to have something to do and something to keep you busy, and you'd be unhappy if you didn't. Wouldn't it be ridiculous after being so busy here if you wound up in Heaven with nothing to do but sit on a cloud playing a harp for a thousand years?-Much less all eternity! I think you'd really get bored. — David Berg

Bellario. Sir, you did take me up
When I was nothing; and only yet am something
By being yours. You trusted me unknown;
And that which you were apt to conster
A simple innocence in me, perhaps
Might have been craft, the cunning of a boy
Hardened in lies and theft: yet ventured you
To part my miseries and me; for which,
I never can expect to serve a lady
That bears more honour in her breast than you. — Francis Beaumont

In my teens I was interested in photography. Then I decided that I should learn something about the world of commerce. And I came to America at age 17 to escape Europe. I went to NYU - nothing better than being 17 years old and coming to New York. — Nicolas Berggruen

The law offends us because it tells us what to do - and most of the time, we hate anyone telling us what to do. But ironically, grace offends us even more, because it tells us that there is nothing we can do, that everything has already been done. And if there is something we hate more than being told what to do, it's being told that we can't do anything, that we can't earn anything - that we are helpless, weak, and needy. — Tullian Tchividjian

I came to see myself one day and it was like looking into a mirror. I came to see that at any given moment, I am both equally ready to stay and to leave. It's like I always have my luggage with me and I can unpack or repack on short notice. I guess that's something you can call a traveler's heart. You are ready to stay with every atom in your body; but you are also ready to leave that way. You're not afraid of forever but you're also not afraid of nothing at all. — C. JoyBell C.

I don't know if I have a voice of my own. I don't see me being an important person with something to say. I haven't. I've got nothing to say. My opinion is of no consequence or value. — Peter Ackroyd

Beauty is undefinable in language. It's something that you see when you see it, or you feel when you feel it, or you hear when you hear it. It usually encompasses all five of the senses. It can't exist without it being a somehow sensorial experience. But, I don't think it's quantifiable. Nothing is really quantifiable. Nothing is certain in love and friendship. We all try to understand these things. — Colin Farrell

Then the challenge is, once you left brain it and build it, then when you're on stage you have to know it so well that you can get lost in it. I don't want to be onstage looking like a robot, I want to be at the end of the day very emotional and what feels like someone being up there rather than reciting things. That's always the challenge, to analyze and then somehow lose yourself in something you absolutely know backwards and forwards. And nothing's going to surprise you, but you have to be surprised by it and let it surprise you. — Bo Burnham

Death -
Death can be faced,
dealt with,
adjusted to,
outlived.
It's the
not knowing
that destroys
interminably...
This
being suspended
in suspense;
waiting - weightless,
How does one face
the faceless,
adjust to nothing?
Waiting implies
something to wait for.
Is there?
There is One.
One who knows...
I rest my soul on that. — Ruth Bell Graham

There is nothing to fear. There is no such thing as death. Death has nothing to do with us. But you said something about being talented
that it makes one different. Now, that does have something to do with us. And talent in the highest and broadest sense means talent for life. — Boris Pasternak

What we all need most urgently now: to realize that transience is not separation - for we, transient as we are, have it in common with those who have passed from us, and they and we exist together in one being where separation is just as unthinkable. Could we otherwise understand such poems if they had been nothing but the utterance of someone who was going to be dead in the future? Don't such poems continually address inside of us, in addition to what is found there now, also something unlimited and unrecognizable? I do not think that the spirit can make itself anywhere so small that it would concern only our temporal existence and our here and now: where it surges toward us there we are the dead and the living all at once. — Rainer Maria Rilke

And you and I know you're the best thing that ever happened to me, and, yes, that's an expression, something people say, that has no meaning, but what I mean is there isn't anybody in the whole world who has loved me the way you have, not my mother, not my old man, not my friends.
There's nothing preventing me and you from loving each other and being some kinda world-class shining beacon of love except how bad do we want it and what are we willing to do for it?
Now, I know I did you wrong, and I was freaking out and being stupid and I was mean to you. You know sometimes I get all fucking confused and I can't see outside of my own asshole. I'm unhappy. Why am I unhappy? It's gotta be somebody's fault, right? It couldn't just be that I'm a self-centered fuck spinning around inside my own dank cloud of concerns.
There isn't anything I can think of that I really want or that the best part of me wants, that loving you won't start doing. I love you. — Ethan Hawke

There's nothing more invigorating than being deeply involved with a small company and a young team of founders out to do something incredibly special. — Michael Moritz

It is quite natural to think of the self as something concrete, but it is, in fact, nothing of the sort. Rather, it is an abstract product of our minds, a convenient concept or schema that enables us to relate our present self with our past, future, and conditional selves, and thereby to create an illusion of coherence and continuity from a big jumble of disparate experiences. Indeed, one could go so far as to argue that the self is nothing but the sum total of our ego defences, and that it is therefore tantamount to one gigantic ego defence, namely, the ego itself. The self is like a cracked mask that is in constant need of being pieced together. But behind the mask there is nobody at home. — Neel Burton

Young people, not to mention people of all ages, really, really don't like being annoyed. And ads, almost always, were annoying. There is nothing beautiful, let alone useful, not to mention authentic, about being interrupted, distracted, or annoyed by something you didn't choose to see. — Andrew Essex

Originality has nothing to do with producing something ' new' - it is about seeking the source, the primordial ground from which you draw and have always drawn your being. It comes about when one works from one's origins, it is the dance of the eternal return ... and is as ancient as the Dreamtime. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

The drive of his own nature to keep developing prevents him from believing that anything is final and complete, yet everything he encounters behaves as though it were final and complete. He suspects that the given order of things is not as solid as it pretends to be; no thing, no self, no form, no principle, is safe, everything is undergoing an invisible but ceaseless transformation, the unsettled holds more of the future than the settled, and the present is nothing but a hypothesis that has not yet been surmounted. What better can he do than hold himself apart from the world, in the good sense exemplified by the scientist's guarded attitude toward facts that might be tempting him to premature conclusions? Hence he hesitates in trying to make something of himself; a character, a profession, a fixed mode of being, are for him concepts that already shadow forth the outlines of the skeleton, which is all that will be left of him in the end. — Robert Musil

I actually really don't want to know," I admitted. "Up until a few seconds ago I had a lot of illusions about you being this incredible, sane guy and I'd like to keep them, but I'm not going to be satisfied until I do."
"Fine then, I won't tell you."
I planted my face in my palm and sighed. "It doesn't matter how crazy this is, I'm going to be thinking about it all night."
He gave me a purely demonic grin. "Then I definitely won't tell you. "
My eyes narrowed. "That's nothing to be proud of."
"And why wouldn't I be proud of keeping a pretty girl up all night?" He chuckled and chewed on a French fry.
My face and the back of my neck burned. He had to be joking. No one could say something so horrifying and then eat a French fry. Supernatural beings didn't like fast food, I was sure of it. This was all an elaborate hoax and I just hasn't picked up on it yet. It had to be, and even if it wasn't I would pretend it was. Pretend until it became true. — Katherine Pine

I may ... pass for being a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets-that's fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue-that's success. Furnished with money and a little fame ... [I] may partake of trendy diversions-that's pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote ... represented a serious impact on our time-that's fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing-less than nothing, a positive impediment-measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty.8 — Richard D. Phillips

I hate the concept of luck, especially when people try to apply it to me. Yes, it's true: Hundreds of thousands of businesses fail. Mine succeded. Was that all just because I "got lucky"? I don't really think so.
What I hate about luck is that it implies being devois of responsibility. It implies that you can do nothing and the step into success as easily as stepping into a pile of dog poop on the sidewalk. It implies that success is something given to a knighted and often undeserving few. Luck tells us that we don't control our own fate, and that our path to succes of failure is written by someone, or something, entirely outside overselves. Luck let us believe that whatever happens, whether good or bad, it's not to our credit or our fault. That is why I don't buy luck. But I do buy magic. — Sophia Amoruso

Lacking strength beauty hates the understanding for asking of her what it cannot do but the life of spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Almondine
Eventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her.
All that winter and all through the spring Almondine had known something was going to happen, but no matter where she looked she couldn't find it. Sometimes, when she entered a room, there was the feeling that the thing that was going to happen had just been there, and she would stop and pant and peer around while the feeling seeped away as mysteriously as it had arrived. Weeks might pass without a sign, and then a night would come, when, lying nose to tail beneath the window in the kitchen corner, listening to the murmur of conversation and the slosh and clink of dishes being washed, she felt it in the house again and she whisked her tail in long, pensive strokes across the baseboards and silently collected her feet beneath her and waited. When half an hour passed and nothing appeared, she groaned and sighed and rolled onto her back and waited to see if it was somewhere in her sleep. — David Wroblewski

It ain't bragging if you've done it. There's nothing wrong with being proud of doing something well. In fact, if you intend to do something creative for a living, it's absolutely essential.
[check for wording] Proper pride says, "I'm good at this." Improper pride says, "I'm better than you. — James A. Owen

system. I mustn't look to individuals. It's the system. I mustn't go into court and say, 'My Lord, I beg to know this from you - is this right or wrong? Have you the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am dismissed?' My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer the system. I mustn't go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by being so cool and satisfied - as they all do, for I know they gain by it while I lose, don't I? - I mustn't say to him, 'I will have something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!' HE is not responsible. It's the system. But, if I do no violence to any of them, here - I may! I don't know what may happen if I am carried beyond myself at last! I will accuse the individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar! — Charles Dickens

First of all, you don't want me to get too hungry. Ever. I'm an ever worse bastard than normal and having starved for centuries, I'm not about to deprive myself again when I don't have to. Second, let me tell you something about your 'friends.' Deimos held me down while I was branded and then took me to the human realm where I was left with nothing. No clothes, no money. Not a damn thing to call my own. Hence the aforementioned starvation. A hundred years later, M'Ordant dumped my inside a Spartan prison camp and told the commander I was a traitor to their people. You don't really want to know what the Spartans did to people they thought betrayed them. D'Alerian had me put inside a Turkish prison in the fifteenth century where I was impaled after being tortured for three weeks. So you'll have to excuse me if I have a hard time feeling too sorry for them right now. At least no one's shoving a sharp spike up their asses. (Jericho) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I think they call that parallas: being able to know the distance of something because you're seeing it from two separate points - and the farther apart those two points are, the more accurate you can be. Put one eye here and one eye fourteen feet away, and you know a whole lot more about the world you're seeing.
The thing is, if you go through life with just your own point of view, you're like that kid with glass eye. If there's something that's right up in your face, it looks really big - overwhelming even. But if you've got that parallax - if you've got that other point of view - you realize that there are bigger, much more important things that are far off toward the horizon. Once you focus on those things rather than the way up close, that close-up stuff becomes nothing more than a nuisance blocking the view. — Neal Shusterman

There is nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation! ... A human being, Hastings, cannot resist theopportunity to reveal himself and express his personality which conversation gives him. Every time he will give himself away. — Agatha Christie

Nothing about his life is more strange to [man] or more unaccountable in purely mundane terms than the stirrings he finds in himself, usually fitful but sometimes overwhelming, to look beyond his animal existence and not be fully satisfied with its immediate substance. He lacks the complacency of the other animals: he is obsessed by pride and guilt, pride at being something more than a mere animal, built at falling short of the high aims he sets for himself. — Lewis Mumford

You haven't seen your father since you were eight?'
He shook his head.
'No word. No contact. No nothing?'
'Nothing.'
Daisy's eyes looked right and left before coming back to his. 'Is he alive?'
Erik turned looked into the blue-green eyes studying him so intently. He was surprised he had revealed this to someone he barely knew. Normally this was the card he kept closest to his chest. Yet something about Daisy looking at him, her expression calm and interested, sympathetic but not pitying, tactfully curious, seemed to be reaching into the tangle of emotions comprising the experience of being so cruelly deserted, and gently drawing out a thread. — Suanne Laqueur

Sentimental Humanitarianism: A Dangerous Temptation Gregg argues that sentimental humanitarianism: Reduces most debates to exchanges of feelings. Common responses to disagreements are "you can't say that" or "that's hurtful" or "that offends me." But in quoting British novelist Ian McEwan, Gregg says there is nothing virtuous about being offended. Is naive of human nature. It assumes everyone is of good will. Rather, Gregg says we have to acknowledge that there are some groups of people in which rational conversation is not possible. Doesn't take free choice seriously. It claims all evil emanates from bad education and unjust structures, but this is hardly the full story. Evil is a free choice of each individual, and Gregg says it's not something that can be explained away by the fact that someone is wealthier than — Anonymous

I was halfway up the stairs when the doorbell rang. "Dash it all!" I said. There was nothing I hated more than being interrupted when I was about to do something gratifying with chemicals. — Alan Bradley

I feel like I'm waiting here. Waiting for something that hasn't happened yet. Something that isn't yet. But that's all I feel and nothing else. I don't know if I even exist. And then someone flips a switch and the light is gone, the room is gone, the weightlessness is gone. I want to ask to wait, because I wasn't finished yet, but I don't have a chance. There is no gentle pulling. No coaxing. No choice. I'm wrenched out. Yanked, as if my head is being snapped back. I'm in the dark and everything is pain. There are too many sensations at once. Every nerve ending is on fire. Like the shock of being born. And then, there are flashes of everything. Color, voices, machines, harsh words. The pain doesn't flash. The pain is constant, steady, never-ending. It's the only thing I know. I don't want to be awake anymore. — Katja Millay

I can't even handle love, there's no way I can handle it being taken away. I won't survive it. Please. Please. Please!
I said that I had something to say to her, which made her listen in a way that she didn't when I simply said things without the preface. Even though the preface meant nothing, it calmed her, just as it calmed real people, for the same no-reason.
I told her what people tell people. That this was what it felt like when love was taken away - but that it wasn't the truth, it was just a feeling. It would pass. It would take time.
She would recharge.
She didn't believe me.
No one ever believes it, I said. That's part of what the feeling is. — B.J. Novak

I think Bob appreciated my outfit. He made me buy the more expensive pendant. You might think that was to my disadvantage, but I accept that status comes with a price."
"Not usually so immediately." I shake my head. "You better not be hitting on federal agent ladies. They'll arrest you."
His grin widens. "I like handcuffs."
I groan. "There is something seriously wrong with you."
"Nothing that a night being worked over by a hot representative of justice couldn't fix. — Holly Black

Love and marriage are about work and compromise. They're about seeing someone for what he is, being dissapointed , and deciding to stick around anyway. They're about commitment and comfort, not some kind of sudden, hysterical recognition'. 'That's not what I want. Disspointment and comfort is not what I want'. 'Why not? Because you expect it to be magical and mystical? Because you don't want to work?' 'Why can't it be magical? Why can't it be mystical?' 'Because if you count on magic and mysticism, then as soon as shit happens, as soon as life interferes, as soon as your stepson treats you badly, or your husband's ex-wife has a fit about something, or your baby dies, as soon as life happens, the magic will disappear and you'll be left with nothing. You can't count on magic. Trust me, I know. Sweetheart, little girl, you can't count on magic'. — Ayelet Waldman

We might all place ourselves in one of two ranks the women who do something, and the women who do nothing; the first being of course the only creditable place to occupy. — Lucy Larcom

In 2014 a survey conducted by a nonprofit organization called Stop Street Harassment revealed that more than 60 percent of women in Buenos Aires had experienced intimidation from men who catcalled them.18 To a lot of men in Buenos Aires, women's concern came as a surprise. When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires's mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn't possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. "All women like to be told compliments," he said. "Those who say they're offended are lying. Even though you'll say something rude, like 'What a cute ass you have' . . . it's all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It's almost the reason that men breathe. — Aziz Ansari

When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires's mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn't possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. "All women like to be told compliments," he said. "Those who say they're offended are lying. Even though you'll say something rude, like 'What a cute ass you have'...it's all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It's almost the reason that men breathe." To be clear, this is the mayor. Upon reading this quote, I investigated, and can confirm that at the time of this interview he was not wearing one of those helmets that holds beers and has straws that go into your mouth. — Aziz Ansari

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be. — Frank Herbert

I pity people who can't find laughter or at least some bit of amusement in the little doings of the day. I believe I could find something ridiculous even in the saddest moment, if necessary. It has nothing to do with being superficial. It's a matter of joy in life. — Sophie Scholl

Finally we are being told the truth: life isn't always easy and pleasant. We already know this to be true, but somehow we tend to go through life thinking that there is something wrong with us when we experience sadness, grief, and physical and emotional pain. The first truth points out that this is just the way it is. There is nothing wrong with you: you have just been born into a realm where pain is a given. — Noah Levine

They say the heart is just a muscle. They say it plays absolutely no role in our emotions and that its use as a symbol for love is based on archaic theories of it being the seat of the soul or something ridiculous like that. But as I quietly listened to every word she was saying to me, as each syllable shot a sharp arrow through the phone and into my ear, I swear I felt like my entire chest would collapse in on itself. I knew this feeling. They say a heart can't really break because there's nothing to be broken. But see, I once had to leave everyone I loved, and it felt this same way. — John Corey Whaley

I have insanely dorky taste. Basically, if you're a woman, and you're under any kind of emotional duress, and you sing a song, I will listen to it forever. It's odd being a 37-year-old heterosexual male who owns nothing but Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos. But I'll go against that at first and play something boring like James Taylor. — Matthew Perry

Happy we were then, for we had a good house, and good food, and good work. There was nothing to do outside at night, except chapel, or choir, or penny-readings, sometimes. But even so, we always found plenty to do until bedtime, for if we were not studying or reading, then we were making something out back, or over the mountain singing somewhere. I can remember no time when there was not plenty to be done.
I wonder what has happened in fifty years to change it all ... But when people stop being friends with their mother and fathers, and itching to be out of the house, and going mad for other things to do, I cannot think. It is like an asthma, that comes on a man quickly. He has no notion how he had it, but there it is, and nothing can cure it. — Richard Llewellyn

When I don't have something to worry about, I worry. Nothing comes so naturally to a human being as anxiety and worry. — Brian Richardson

You know, the character of Isabelle in 'Love Crime' is the only character I feel the furthest from. I have nothing to share with her, so it was really difficult. Being an actor of composition is something, but you always base yourself on something you know about. — Ludivine Sagnier

The thing about being a songwriter is,even if you been fucked over, you can find consolation in writing about it, and pour it out. Everything has something to do with something; nothing is divorced. It becomes an experience,a feeling or a aconglomeration of experiences ... — Keith Richards

On land I have too much time, I'm overwhelmed by a boredom that eventually paralyzes me. But this isn't really the main reason for my suicide. Even if I had another chance to go to sea, I know that for a long time I've been storing up something I can only define as a weariness with being alive, with having to choose between one thing and another, with listening to people around me talk about things that basically don't interest them, that they really know nothing about. The foolishness of our fellow humans knows no bounds, my dear Gaviero. If it didn't sound absurd, I'd say I'm leaving because I can't stand the noise the living make. — Alvaro Mutis

My being consists of matter and form, that is, of soul and body; annihilation will reach neither of them, for they were never produced out of nothing. The consequence is, that every part of me will serve to make something in the world; and this again will change into another part through an infinite succession of change. This constant method of alteration gave me my being, and my father before me, and so on to eternity backward: for I think I may speak thus, even though the world be confined within certain determinate periods. — Marcus Aurelius

At the moment everything was being destroyed she had created that which was most difficult: she had not drawn something out of nothing (a meaningless act), but given to nothing, in its form of nothing, the form of something. — Maurice Blanchot

I felt weightless. I felt nothing would happen to me. I felt that anything might happen to me. I was looking straight ahead, running, trying to keep up, and things were occurring along the dark peripheries of my vision: there would be a bright light and then darkness again and the sound, constantly, of something else breaking, and of movement, of objects being thrown and of people falling. — Bill Buford

The craft, trade, agriculture, science, a large part of the art - all this can only stand on a broad base , on a consolidated, strong and healthy mediocrity. Served in their services and the science of their work - and even the arts. We cannot wish for better: it belongs to such an average sort of person - it is under displace exceptions - it has nothing aristocratic about something and still les in their anarchic instincts - The power of the center is then held upright by the trade, especially the money market: the instinct of great financiers goes against all extremes, - the Jews are the reason for the time being conserve power in our so insecure and threatened Europe. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. It is this achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue in these pages. — G.K. Chesterton

From the point of view of pure logic or philosophy, there will often be a dialectical tension between two concepts.
For example ...
If I reflect on the concept of 'being,' I will be obliged to introduce the opposite concept, that of 'nothing.' You can't reflect on your existence without immediately realizing that you won't always exist. The tension between 'being' and 'nothing' becomes resolved in the concept of 'becoming.' Because if something is in the process of becoming, it both is and is not. — Jostein Gaarder

I think I am at that stage of Life now where Success or Failure, nothing Bothers me. If I get little success then I get lots of rejections and failures on a regular basis too. But none of that bothers me at all. I can take failure as sportingly without getting bothered as I take success. And this is how my life has drastically changed in last one year or something. I don't do things anymore to please people around me and all I care about is If I am happy being where I am and I am enjoying doing what I am doing or not. I may not be where I want to be yet but I am Happy.This is what matters in Life. Isn't it? Find what you love. Sooner or Later but you need to find one day, and once you find, give your everything to it. There may be many failures and rejections on the way but you will reach where you want to be some day and most importantly, you will be happy and in Peace with where you are. — Shivam Singh

The problem is that if you're self-conscious about being a person on whom nothing is lost, isn't something lost - some kind of presence? You're distracted by trying to be totally, perfectly impressionable. — Ben Lerner

Some form of gnosis or immediacy is attached to all thinking as its root-form or primitive origination; every act of thinking has this passive derivation, this coming-into-being of thinking not out of nothing (as it likes to imagine) but out of some unthinkable something. But the most self-abstractivist or self-reductivist kind of thinking cannot tolerate even the notion (much less the traumatic experience or confrontation) of an incurable pathos, a weakness or blind-spot, within consciousness. The very idea is an insult to the autonomy or self-determinability of ego/will/reason. — Kenny Smith

Chance is a perfectly good word to describe mathematic possibilities, but it is only a word. It is not an entity. Chance is nothing. It has no power because it has no being; therefore, it can exercise no influence over anything. Yet, we have sophisticated scientists today who make sober statements declaring that the whole universe was created by chance. This is to say that nothing caused something, and there is no statement more anti-scientific than that. Everything has a cause, and the ultimate cause, as we have seen, is God. — R.C. Sproul

In that way Vinteuil's phrase, like some theme, say, in Tristan, which represents to us also a certain acquisition of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state, had endued a vesture of humanity that was affecting enough. Its destiny was linked, for the future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one of the special, the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain. — Marcel Proust

Why should not He had made all things, still having something immediately to do with the things that He has made? Where lies the great difficulty, if we own the being of a God, that He created all things out of nothing, I'll be allowing something immediate influence of God on creation still? — Jonathan Edwards

It is therefore an analogical knowledge: a knowledge of a being who is unknowable in himself, yet able to make something of himself known in the being he created. Here, indeed, lies something of an antinomy. Rather, agnosticism, suffering from a confusion of concepts, sees here an irresolvable contradiction in what Christian theology regards as an adorable mystery. It is completely incomprehensible to us how God can reveal himself and to some extent make himself known in created beings: eternity in time, immensity in space, infinity in the finite, immutability in change, being in becoming, the all, as it were, in that which is nothing. This mystery cannot be comprehended; it can only be gratefully acknowledged. — Anonymous

In spite of being happier than I ever dreamed I could be, I'm also soberer. The fear that something may happen to you rests like a shadow on my heart. Always before I could be frivolous and carefree and unconcerned, because I had nothing precious to lose. But now
I shall have a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life. Whenever you are away from me I shall be thinking of all the automobiles that can run over you, or the signboards that can fall on your head or the dreadful, squirmy germs that you may be swallowing. — Jean Webster

I know that sometimes when you are really worried about something, it ends up not being nearly as bad as you think it will be, and you get to be relieved that you were just being silly, worrying so much over nothing. But sometimes it is just the opposite. It can happen that whatever you are worried about will be even worse than you could have possibly imagined, and you find that you were right to be worried, and even that, maybe, you weren't worried enough. — Laura Moriarty

Faith belongs to the human spirit. Faith is faith. Humanity is divided by religion, religion is the divider of humanity. If every human could be removed of their blindfolds and see that faith is in itself faith and that this is something which belongs to each and every human being, then at that time the dividers of religion will suddenly mean nothing and we will all see that we are united by faith in and of itself. There is only one faith and it is called faith. And no man needs to prove to another man that what he believes in exists, because even if it does not exist, his faith is his belief that it is there, that something is there, and that in itself is faith. So I do not need to prove to any man that what I believe in exists or not, there is no such contest between man, my faith breathes in the body of my belief; the fact that I believe is the breath of my faith. — C. JoyBell C.

There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives — Paul Farmer

Would you like me to grovel with gratitude for bringing me here, High Lord?"
"Ah. The Suriel told you nothing important, did it?"
That smile of his sparked something bold in my chest. "He also said that you liked being brushed, and if I'm a clever girl, I might train you with treats."
Tamlin tipped his head to the sky and roared with laughter. Despite myself, I let out a quiet laugh.
"I might die of surprise," Lucien said behind me. "You made a joke, Feyre."
I turned to look at him with a cool smile. "You don't want to know what the Suriel said about you." I flicked my brows up, and Lucien lifted his hands in defeat.
"I'd pay good money to hear what the Suriel thinks of Lucien," Tamlin said.
A cork popped, followed by the sounds of Lucien chugging the bottle's contents and chuckling with a muttered, "Brushed. — Sarah J. Maas

We must also realize that nothing happens without a purpose. Nothing. Not even broken hearts. Not even pain. That broken heart and that pain are lessons and signs for us. They are warnings that something is wrong. They are warnings that we need to make a change. Just like the pain of being burned is what warns us to remove our hand from the fire, emotional pain warns us that we need to make an internal change. We need to detach. Pain is a form of forced detachment. Like the loved one who hurts you again and again and again, the more dunya hurts us, the more we inevitably detach from it. The more we inevitably stop loving it. — Yasmin Mogahed

Unless you are fulfilled, unless you have found something that is not just a profession but something like a vocation, a calling, you will never be able to feel happy about your parents, because they are the cause of you being in this miserable world. You cannot feel grateful, there is nothing to be grateful about. Once you are fulfilled, then you will feel tremendously grateful. And your fulfilment is possible only if you don't become a thing. Your destiny is to become a person. Your destiny is to become an intrinsic value. Your destiny is to become an end in yourself. — Osho

Courage is called for on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, even when there's nothing urgent at stake. It is up to us to create our lives consistent with who we know ourselves to be - making what's at stake that which we say is at stake. It's the stand we take on ourselves. That stand then becomes who we are. Saying that something is at stake is always a purely existential act. This business about freedom, this business about power, is really a product of a place to stand - not something that is out in front of us, that we're working on or measuring ourselves against. When we live consistent with what we say, we are being true to ourselves. — Nancy Zapolski

There's something about outward appearances that has always been important to me. I always thought I was so ugly. I mean, I really did. I remember being in L.A. at my mom's house as a little kid and just staring into the mirror for hours. It was like, if I looked long enough, maybe I'd finally be handsome. It never worked. I just got uglier and uglier. Nothing about me ever seemed good enough. And there was this sadness inside me - this hopelessness. Focusing on my physical appearance was at least easier than trying to address the internal shit. — Nic Sheff

The present relationship existing between husband and wife, where one claims a command over the actions of the other, is nothing more than a remnant of the old leaven of slavery. It is necessarily destructive of refined love; for how can a man continue to regard as his type of the ideal a being whom he has, be denying an equality of privilege with himself, degraded to something below himself? — Herbert Spencer

Being able to do something that's never been done before, that's what I've always wanted to do ... There was nothing that was going to stand in my way of being the first. — Michael Phelps

Everybody asks why I started at the end and worked back to the beginning, the reason is simple, I couldn't understand the beginning until I had reached the end. There were too many pieces of the puzzle missing, too much you would never tell. I could sell these things. People want to buy them, but I'd set all this on fire first. She'd like that, that's what she would do. She'd make it just to burn it. I couldn't afford this one, but the beginning deserves something special. But how do I show that nothing, not a taste, not a smell, not even the color of the sky, has ever been as clear and sharp as it was when I belonged to her. I don't know how to express the being with someone so dangerous is the last time I felt safe ... (White Oleander) — Janet Fitch

There's nothing to be gained from passive observance, the simple documenting of conditions, because, at its core, it sets a bad example. Every time something is observed and not fixed, or when one has a chance to give in some way and does not, there is a lie being told, the same lie we all know by heart but which needn't be reiterated. — Dave Eggers

It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority - a majority, mark you; not all - of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"

"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.

"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage. — Iain M. Banks

It is requisite that we should here say something of Magick, which is so linked to Astrology, as being her near Kinswoman, that whoever professes Magick without Astrology, does nothing, but is altogether out of the way. — Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

So this is Canada," I said, looking outside my car door.
"For the last time, it's not Canada," Sydney replied, rolling her eyes. "It's northern Michigan."
I glanced around, seeing nothing but enormous trees in every direction. Despite it being a late August afternoon, the temperature could've easily passed for something in autumn. Craning my head, I just barely caught a glimpse of gray waters beyond the trees to my right: Lake Superior, according to the map I'd seen.
"Maybe it's not Canada," I conceded. "But it's exactly how I always imagined Canada would look. Except I thought there'd be more hockey. — Richelle Mead

Lincoln replied that he was more than willing to die, but that he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived, and that to connect his name with the events transpiring in his day and generation and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow man was what he desired to live for. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Our insistence on being different from everything around us is one of the greatest mistakes of mankind. We stubbornly maintain an illusory distinction that sets us apart from rock and ice, water and fire, plant and animal. Both religion and rationality try to explain it through an elaborate vocabulary of separation - soul, atman, spirit, ghosts in the machine or simply the idea of selfhood. We have dreamed up gods so that we can reassure ourselves that somewhere, someday, somehow, after this life is over, something awaits us: a presence that recognizes who we are. But if we approach a mountain instead, accepting that we are nothing more or less than an integral part of its existence, our ego merges with the nature of the mountain. In — Stephen Alter

There's not much that I'm closed off about, and the universe gave me all that so I could help people feel like they don't have to be something they're not or feel like they have to fake happy. There's nothing worse than being fake happy. — Miley Cyrus

At the end of the day this is nothing more than a blog. It's nice to hit them high notes - but REALLY - how significant do you think something that sort of sounds like the sound of a flatulent frog being run over by a clown car really needs to be? — Steve Vernon

The vibrations he felt in his sleep had nothing to do with his soul easing out of his body as he dreamily thought; they came solely from the weight and motion of the freight train rolling north to deliver fuel, furniture and other items having no relevance to Elijah's life or his dreaming. On the metal rail his arm itched like a nose with a feeling that something bad was about to happen. In another life the sound of the train would have been reminiscent of certain songs by Muddy Waters or even Bruce Springsteen but not in this one. In this life the sound stabbed viciously against the night exactly like a human being demonstrating flawless disrespect for the life of another human being.
from short story ELIJAH'S SKIN — Aberjhani

They'd had fun, for sure. They laughed and enjoyed being together. But if she was painfully honest with herself, something was missing. Something in the way Tim looked at her. She remembered her mom's word. "I saw the way he looked at you ... he adores you." Maybe that was it. Tim looked at her on a surface level. He smiled and seemed happy to see her. But When Cody looked at her, there were no layers left, nothing her didn't reveal, nothing he couldn't see. He didn't really look at her so much as he looked into her. To the deepest, most real places in her heart and soul. — Karen Kingsbury