Quotes & Sayings About Life Meaning Nothing

He found himself filled with joy, for now his existence had a meaning. He had a future, because he was part of a world that had a future, and instead of wanting to decide for himself and determine that future for everyone else, he knew that he would be glad just to touch some small part of it. To marry and give happiness to his wife. To have a child and give it the same love that his parents gave him. To have a friend and ease his burdedn now and then. To have a skill or a secret and teach it to a student whose life might be changed a little by what he learned. Why had he dreamed of leading armies, whichwould accomplish nothing, when he could do these miraculous small things and change the world? — Orson Scott Card

If your education, talent and capacity can do nothing; your body can do lots of things. — M.F. Moonzajer

Be sure to forsake, to turn away from, any teaching in the world that will demand of you a "proof of goodness" by the renouncing of earthly joys, pleasures, happiness, possessions! Forget about the creed that tells you, that what you make in this life accounts for nothing in the next one. Life on this Earth is a gift and we do not accept good gifts only to throw them away later on! Make in this life laughter, joy, pleasure, attain good things and give to others good things, too. But never let your aim be to selflessness, for at the end of the day, our responsibilities are to our own selves and to those few whom we love and who truly love us. And holiness? Holiness is happiness, holiness is joy. — C. JoyBell C.

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning. — Albert Camus

The temptation is to make an idol of our own experience, to assume our pain is more singular than it is. Experience means nothing if it does not mean beyond itself: we mean nothing unless and until our hard-won meanings are internalized and catalyzed within the lives of others. There is something I am meant to see, something for which my own situation and suffering are the lens, but the cost of such seeing - I am just beginning to realize - may very well be any final clarity or perspective on my own life, my own faith. That would not be a bad fate, to burn up like the booster engine that falls away from the throttling rocket, lighting a little dark as I go. — Christian Wiman

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

The fakirs always throng the sea-shore
To find meaning in the chaos
And then they too become melancholy
Feeling nothing but their naked toes. — Avijeet Das

Adventure begins with you, personally. It is in the way you look at things. It is the mental stance you take as you face your day. It is finding magic in things. It is talking with people and discovering their inner goodness. It is the thrill of feeling a part of the life around you. The attitude of adventure will open things up for you. The world will become alive with new zest and meaning. You'll become more aware of the beauty everywhere. Nothing will seem unimportant. Everything will be revealed as having pattern and purpose. — Wilferd Peterson

It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning, but when we can believe it - and I do and always have - then there is nothing we do that is without meaning and nothing that we suffer that does not hold the seed of creation in it. — May Sarton

A well-meaning townie (W-MT) will sidle up to the desk. 'Any word on Tamerlane?' [Translation: May I turn over your significant personal loss for my own amusement?]
A.J. will reply, 'Nothing yet.' [Translation: Life still ruined.]
W-MT: Oh, I'm sure something will turn up. [Translation: Since I have no investment in the outcome of this situation, it costs me nothing to be optimistic.] — Gabrielle Zevin

The meaning of culture is nothing less than the conduct of life itself, fortified, thickened, made more crafty and subtle, by contact with books and with art. — John Cowper Powys

When a film's heroine innocently coughs, you know that two scenes later, at most, she'll be in an oxygen tent; when a man bumps into a woman at the train station, you know that man will become the woman's lover and/or murderer. In everyday life, where we cough often and are always bumping into people, our daily actions rarely reverberate so lucidly. Once we love or hate someone, we can think back and remember that first casual encounter. But what of all the chance meetings that nothing ever comes of? While our bodies move ever forward on the time line, our minds continuously trace backward, seeking shape and meaning as deftly as any arrow seeking its mark. — Lucy Grealy

If you believe in nothing, if life can have no real objective meaning and all is socially constructed; then pleasure is absolutely necessary as an analgesic, and distraction is the primary philosophical argument. The politically correct are nihilists, that is reality-deniers, and when there is no reality then the only positive is pleasure. — Bruce G. Charlton

She was explaining to me that I had won nothing, that in the world there is nothing to win, that her life was full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine, and that time simply slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other every so often to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other. — Elena Ferrante

There comes a time in the life of a sailor when he no longer belongs ashore. It's then that he surrenders to the Pacific, where no land blocks the eye, where sky and ocean mirror each other until above and below have lost their meaning, and the Milky Way looks like the spume of a breaking wave and the globe itself rolls like a boat in the midst of the sinking and heaving surf of that starry sky, and even the sun is nothing but a tiny glowing dot of phosphorescence on the sea of the night. — Carsten Jensen

If life is nothing more than a journey to death, autumn makes sense but spring does not. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Travel compels you to discover your spiritual side by elimination: Without all the rituals, routines and possessions that give your life meaning at home, you're forced to look for meaning within yourself Indeed, if travel is a process that helps you 'find yourself', it's because it leaves you with nothing to hide behind - it yanks you out from the realm of rehearsed responses and dull comforts, and forces you into the present. Here, in the fleeting moment, you are left to improvise, to come to terms with your raw, true self. — Rolf Potts

The first morning after Westley's departure, Buttercup thought she was entitled to do nothing more than sit around moping and feeling sorry for herself. After all, the love of her life had fled, life had no meaning, how could you face the future, et cetera, et cetera. — William Goldman

From the time I learned to love Jade and was drawn into the life of the Butterfield house, straight through to the wait for my case to come before the judge, there was nothing in my life that wasn't alive with meaning, that wasn't capable of suggesting weird and hidden significances, that didn't carry with it the undertaste of what for lack of anything better to call it I'll call The Infinite. If being in love is to be suddenly united with the most unruly, the most outrageously alive part of yourself, this state of piercing consciousness did not subside in me, as I've learned it does in others, after a time. If my mind could have made a sound, it would have burst a row of wineglasses. I saw coincidences everywhere; meanings darted and danced like overheated molecules. Everything was terrifyingly complex; everything was terrifyingly simple. Nothing went unnoticed and everything carried with it a kind of drama. — Scott Spencer

I could tell you that the past is the past, and nothing has any consequence, and I'm tired of a life where nothing I do has any meaning for anything more than myself, and that over the years I've grown numb inside, hollow and empty, and I drift from situation to situation like a ghost visiting an old graveside in search of an explanation of how he died, and in my search I have found nothing. Nothing that makes any sense. — Claire North

Everyone is a raconteur without realizing it. We speak to our friends, we speak to our doctors and therapists about the nothing-meaning nonsense that goes on in our lives, but the difference in telling a story and complaining about the ills of one's life is in the delivery. We can talk about how someone slighted you at work, or we can talk about how that person looked when they promptly fell down the stairs a moment after disdaining you. There, you see, is the difference: people will often notice the main but not the nuance; they will notice the face of the person yelling at them and the pitch of their shouts, but will not notice the comfort that the ululations of agony and twisted limbs lying on the bottom stile can promise. — Michelle Franklin

The hillsides and Alps looked as if they'd been sculpted and freshly seeded. Nothing appeared to be placed at random. The world is out of control, but the Swiss had purpose. They derived life's meaning from geography. — Scott Haas

Science does not see beyond the atom interacting with atom, the chemicals interacting with chemicals. The scientist cannot see the impressive existence of himself. Academics will never learn the meaning of life because they don't feel it; they can only accept its existence as fact. "I think therefore I am." And yet, thought is a cloud reflecting the impressions of a consciousness. I am therefore I think. The academic mind does not appreciate life in the festive sense therefore - derailed to love by a numb perspective. Life is an unknown, death is a mystery; no, life is a mystery, death is the unknown - in the sense that I will un-know my self in death. Science ignores the ultimate question in pursuance of the distant things, the most superficial things. One must discover from the inside out to discover he is made of nothing, and in that supreme emptiness, he is connected directly to everything that he studies. — Matthew Holbert

She walked through the underpass at the Elephant and Castle, enjoying the sense that nothing really mattered, not the truth about the past, nor whether they believed her, not Winnie's drinking or Vik's ultimatum. It was the perfect place to escape from a painful past. She could waste years at home trying to make sense of a random series of events. There was no meaning, no lessons to be learned, no moral - none of it meant anything. She could spend her entire life trying to weave meaning into it, like compulsive gamblers and their secret schema. Nothing mattered, really, because an anonymous city is the moral equivalent of a darkened room. She understood why Ann had come here and stayed here and died here. It wouldn't be hard. All she had to do was let go of home. She would phone Leslie and Liam sometimes, say she was fine, fine, let the calls get farther apart, make up a life for herself and they'd finally forget. — Denise Mina

Keys to Finding Hope: 1. Hope depends upon taking care that we have at least two alternatives, in every situation we find ourselves, and with every task confronting us. 2. In any situation, no matter how much we may feel we are at the mercy of vast forces out there, that are totally beyond our control, we can always find something that is within our control, however small, and work on that. 3. Nothing that happens to us is just senseless and meaningless. In the context of our total life, it will eventually turn out to have meaning. — Richard Nelson Bolles

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. — Leo Tolstoy

What we got is NOW, Huck, and now is forever. Until it ain't. So, you can't worry over nothing except putting off the end a your story as long as you can, and finishing it with a bang. — Robert Coover

It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period — Alice Walker

We are probably wrong to suspect that each individual has some secret passion, some mystery, some weakness; if Jean-Yves's father had had to express his innermost convictions, the profound meaning he ascribed to life, he could probably have cited nothing more than a slight disappointment. — Michel Houellebecq

Everybody knows how awful the world is and each person distorts it in a certain way that enables him to get through. Some people distort it with religious things, others with sports, money, love, art, and they all have their own nonsense about what makes it meaningful, and all but nothing makes it meaningful. These things definitely serve a certain function, but in the end they all fail to give life meaning and everyone goes to his grave in a meaningless way. — Woody Allen

We desperately want to believe in something. To simply live out our lives believing in nothing is to live as if this thing we call life is filled with nothing but nothing. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

What did he understand? Nothing. Where was he headed? Nowhere. What did he want? To know. What? A meaning. Why? A riddle. — Carson McCullers

The meaning of worldly life is external problems [upadhi, problems arising out of external situations]. There is nothing in it which belongs to us. Seeds (causes) of external problems are sown, and external problems grow again. — Dada Bhagwan

One of my defining beliefs is that Jesus Christ has taken all of my guilt before God, and that he has been raised from the dead. That gives incredible hope and meaning to every day of my life - that nothing done in this world is wasted when it's done for him and his glory, and that there will be a day of justice and reward for the entire world. — Joshua Harris

Finally, I formulate and say a little prayer to God, and since we haven't officially spoken since my mom and Elliott died that takes up quite a bit of my time.
The rest of it I spend on trying to determine what I think love really is and what I actually feel for Tally Landon at this point. Upon deep reflection, I realize that I must be at the edge of life's abyss. This is me. All there is left of me; and yet, I'm looking over and contemplating its meaning on whether to jump or stay. I'm not sure this feeling for Tally Landon is made up of love any more than it is of hate. This must be a kind of purgatory - the in-between place - because these pervasive feelings of rage and passion for Tally are equalized and actually co-mingle together - like fire and water - each ready to extinguish the other. I've come to accept the truth. There may be nothing left for us. It could go either way. — Katherine Owen

The road to Epidaurus is like the road to creation. One stops searching. One grows silent, stilled by the hush of mysterious beginnings. If one could speak one would become melodious. There is nothing to be seized or reassured or cornered off here: there is only a breaking down of the walls which lock the spirit in. The landscape does not recede, it installs itself in the open places of the heart j it crowds in, accumulates, dispossesses. You are no longer riding through something - call it Nature, if you will - but participating in a rout, a rout of the forces of greed, malevolence, envy, selfishness, spite, intolerance, pride, arrogance, cunning, duplicity and so on.
It is the morning of the first day of the great peace, the peace of the heart, which comes with surrender, I never knew the meaning of peace until I arrived at Epidaurus. Like everybody I had used the word all my life, without once realizing that I was using a counterfeit. — Henry Miller

There is nothing in this world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is meaning in one's life. — Viktor E. Frankl

I still do not understand why some people think they mean nothing to anyone; while their simple smile gives unlimited reasons for others to live. — M.F. Moonzajer

She's not happy in her marriage. Not unhappy exactly, but not happy. He doesn't want kids, so that's nothing to look forward to. Her life is chock-full of quiet tedium. Suddenly, she falls in love. And sure, there's the excitement of being with her lover, but there's also the excitement of not being with him. Of waiting and going on with her ordinary life. And all that dullness now becomes part of the drama. Because that's her cover story. All the dreary anguish and monotony that fills ninety-eight percent of her life is electrified with meaning, since it now serves as the perfect camouflage to hide the two percent of passion. And, yes, she felt guilt and, yes, she felt shame. But those are powerful emotions too, and were all part of the glorious transformation of a featureless bland life into an adventure. — Phoef Sutton

I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears.
And yet there's nothing to understand. The problem is that children believe what adults say and, once they're adults themselves, they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children. 'Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is' is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late. The mystery remains intact, but all your available energy has long been wasted on stupid things. All that's left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can't find any meaning in your life, and then, the better to convince yourself, you deceive your own children. — Muriel Barbery

It's all right."
"It's not. Nothing's right. I've never done a right thing in my life, it seems."
"That makes a pair of us then." Her lips pressed against the spot under his ear. "But I believe we are right together, don't you? People like us ... we have no talent for following rules. We can only follow our hearts. I've wronged people as well, but is it horribly wicked that I can't bring myself to regret it? It brought me to you."
He took one of her hands and kissed it. "You're so young, you can't know the meaning of true regret. It's never what you've done, love, it's what you've left undone. — Tessa Dare

Language can't describe reality. Literature has no stable reference, no real meaning. Each reader's interpretation is equally valid, more important than the author's intention. In fact, nothing in life has meaning. Reality is subjective. Values and truths are subjective. Life itself is a kind of illusion. Blah, blah, blah, let's have another scotch. — Dean Koontz

I believe that in the process of locating new avenues of creative thought, we will also arrive at an existential conservatism. It is worth asking repeatedly: Where are our deepest roots? We are, it seems, Old World, catarrhine primates, brilliant emergent animals, defined genetically by our unique origins, blessed by our newfound biological genius, and secure in our homeland if we wish to make it so. What does it all mean? This is what it all means: To the extent that we depend on prosthetic devices to keep ourselves and the biosphere alive, we will render everything fragile. To the extent that we banish the rest of life, we will impoverish our own species for all time. And if we should surrender our genetic nature to machine-aided ratiocination, and our ethics and art and our very meaning to a habit of careless discursion in the name of progress, imagining ourselves godlike and absolved from our ancient heritage, we will become nothing. — Edward O. Wilson

Even after you've just won the Super Bowl
especially after you've just won the Super Bowl
there's always next year. If Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing, then the only thing is nothing
emptiness, the nightmare of life without ultimate meaning. — Tom Landry

But the soul of Africa, its integrity, the slow inexorable pulse of its life, is its own and of such singular rhythm that no outsider, unless steeped from childhood in its endless, even beat, can ever hope to experience it, except only as a bystander might experience a Masai war dance knowing nothing of its music nor the meaning of its steps. — Beryl Markham

If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren't reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don't have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me. But when the morning comes, I realize that there's nothing to be done about what has already happened. I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it. — Adriana Trigiani

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments - which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves. — Atul Gawande

[Jesus] tilted His head back, pulled up one last time to draw breath and cried, "Tetelestai!" It was a Greek expression most everyone present would have understood. It was an accounting term. Archaeologists have found papyrus tax receipts with "Tetelestai" written across them, meaning "paid in full." With Jesus' last breath on the cross, He declared the debt of sin cancelled, completely satisfied. Nothing else required. Not good deeds. Not generous donations. Not penance or confession or baptism or ... or ... or ... nothing. The penalty for sin is death, and we were all born hopelessly in debt. He paid our debt in full by giving His life so that we might live forever. — Charles R. Swindoll

Nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning we give it. — Anthony Robbins

Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy,"Easy" doesn't enter into grown-up life. — Michael Caine

Such was the code that the world had accepted and such was the key to the code: that it hooked man's love of existence to a circuit of torture, so that only the man who had nothing to offer would have nothing to fear, so that the virtues which made life possible and the values which gave it meaning became the agents of its destruction, so that one's best became the tool of one's agony, and man's life on earth became impractical. — Ayn Rand

Then there is the cosmologist, who views himself as nothing but a manipulation of atoms; his mind configured out of randomness into the tool a vast, blind universe might use to perceive itself. If this is so then truly "all is vanity". What could be more pleasing to the cosmic narcissist than to gaze eternally with a billion eyes into the mirror that is himself? What fault, however, if certain eyes ultimately don't like what they see? — Dan Garfat-Pratt

The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost it's meaning — Jean Baudrillard

Man wants to reign supreme through the revolution. But why reign supreme if nothing has any
meaning? Why wish for immortality if the aspect of life is so hideous? There is no method of thought
which is absolutely nihilist except, perhaps, the method that leads to suicide, any more than there is
absolute materialism. — Albert Camus

You see," he said turning to Mr Norton, "he has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life. Understand. Understand? It's worse than that. He registers with his senses but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he doesn't digest it. Already he is - well, bless my soul! Behold! a walking zombie! Already he's learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man! — Ralph Ellison

Sometimes in your life you just meet someone or hear something that nudges you on the right path. And that becomes the best advice. It could just be a bit of commonsense said in a way that resonates with something in you. It's nothing new, but because it connects with you it holds meaning for you. — Chetan Bhagat

Nothing lasts forever. Everything is fleeting. And yet, that's the very reason that life has meaning. When things cost effort to gain and are finite they are of value. — Sarah Noffke

Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?
I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here. — Chaim Potok

It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me ... And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die!"
"So what's it all about? What's it for? It's not possible. It's not possible that life could have been as senseless and sickening as this. And if it has really been as sickening and senseless as this why do I have to die, and die in agony? There's something wrong. Maybe I didn't live as I should have done?" came the sudden thought. "But how can that be when I did everything properly?" he wondered, instantly dismissing as a total impossibility the one and only solution to the mystery of life and death. — Leo Tolstoy

The Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert talk about the two "hungers". There is the Great Hunger and there is the Little Hunger. The Little Hunger wants food for the belly; but the Great Hunger, the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning ...
There is ultimately only one thing that makes human beings deeply and profoundly bitter, and that is to have thrust upon them a life without meaning.
There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness. But of far more comfort to the soul is something greater than happiness or unhappiness, and that is meaning. Because meaning transfigures all. Once what you are doing has for you meaning, it is irrelevant whether you're happy or unhappy. You are content - you are not alone in your Spirit - you belong. — Laurens Van Der Post

He looked down at the books. There was a long silence. Then he raised his eyes and directed his gaze at Gershon, and Gershon did not look away. "I will tell you, Loran what is of importance is not that there may be nothing. We have always acknowledged that as a possibility. What is important is that if indeed there is nothing, then we should be prepared to make something out of the one thing we have left to us
ourselves. I do not know what else to tell you, Loran. No one is in possession of all wisdom. No one." Gershon sat in silence, looking at Nathan Malkuson. — Chaim Potok

You wouldn't think the touch of someone's hand could blow your mind. It's nothing, right? People don't right songs and poems about holding hands - they write them about kisses and sex and eternal love. I mean, when you're a little kid you hold hands with your parents to cross the street. Who's going to write an ode to that?
We were alone in the dark, even though the enormous theater was filled with probably a thousand people. We were a tiny island in a sea of other people who didn't matter, who had no meaning, who were so stupid, so oblivious, so stuck in their own boring lives that they didn't even notice the huge, momentous, life-shattering event that was taking place right there in row L, between seats 102 and 104.
Derek Edwards was holding my hand. — Claire LaZebnik

To most theistic believers, human life can have no meaning in a universe without God. Quite sincerely, and with understandable yearning for a meaning to their existence, they reject the possibility of no God. In their minds, only a purposeful universe based on God is possible and science can do nothing else but support thistruth. — Victor J. Stenger

Your life will always be the perfect classroom journey for you and every experience that shows up in your journey is here to serve you. There is meaning and purpose behind everything that happens. There are no accidents which means your suffering through difficulties is never for nothing. Your life matters and everything you experience matters. Your trials are there to help you become a better person and trusting this is truth will take some of the sting out of them. Suffering becomes more bearable if it at least counts for something. — Kimberly Giles

Life is a test. It is only a test
meaning that's all it is. Nothing more, but nothing less. It is a test of our convictions and priorities, our faith and faithfulness, our patience and resilience, and in the end, our ultimate desires. It is a test to determine if we want to be part of the kingdom of God more than we want anything else. — Sheri Dew

There is a beautiful and life-enhancing alternative outlook that offers insight, consolation, inspiration and meaning, which has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the best, most generous, most sympathetic understanding of human reality. — A.C. Grayling

Because of our fear that we are merely excited matter and the consequent grudge that we hold against the universe, we feel lost and alienated, like a refugee far from home in a universe that cares nothing for us. — Eric Maisel

Nothing compares to the feeling that you get when you are in love. — Avijeet Das

To say that life is nothing but a property of certain peculiar combinations of atoms is like saying that Shakespeare's Hamlet is nothing but a property of a peculiar combination of letters. — Ernst F. Schumacher

The sciences paint an impersonal and objective account of the world, deliberately devoid of "meaning", telling us about origins and mechanics of life, by revealing nothing of the joys and sorrows of living. — John Barrow

The master and the student on the journey to mastery, knows that the illusions are the illusions, decides why they are there, and then consciously creates what will be experienced next within the self through the illusions. When facing any life experience, there is a formula, a process, through which you may choose to move through mastery. Simply make the following statements: One, nothing in my world is real. Two, The meaning of everything is the meaning I give it. Three, I am who I say I am, and my experience is what I say it is. This is how to work with the illusions of life. — Neale Donald Walsch

You know how long's the universe. It's seven million freeways side by side. You know how high. So high the moon just falls. But little punks, you still know the hardcore of the universe. It's cause you're hardcore too. You're made of pure universe, under your bones. And nothing ever starts shit by meaning to. We meant to break down the amerikan dream throwing bottles. All we broke was bottles. What worked was one stolen handful of flax seed. All ages shows in the highschool parkade, and the keys to the bandroom door. Their dream was a joke anyway. What worked was a nother joke. — Noah Wareness

That pain you feel," Master Blint said almost gently, "is the pain of abandoning a delusion. The delusion is meaning, Kylar. There is no higher purpose. There are no gods. No arbiters of right and wrong. I don't ask you to like reality. I only ask you to be strong enough to face it. There is nothing beyond this. There is only the perfection we attain by becoming weapons, as strong and merciless as a sword. There is no essential good in living. Life is nothing in itself. It's a place marker that proves who's winning, and we are the winners. We are always the winners. There is nothing by the winning. Even winning means nothing. We win because it's an insult to lose. The ends don't justify the means. The means don't justify the ends. There is no one to justify to. There is no justification. — Brent Weeks

If you want to learn anything, learn trust - nothing else id needed. If you are miserable, nothing else will help - learn trust. If you don't feel any meaning in life and you feel meaningless, nothing will help - learn trust. Trust gives meaning because trust makes you capable of allowing the whole descend upon you. — Osho

I do not mean to say that I viewed those desires of mine that deviated from accepted standards as normal and orthodox; nor do I mean that I labored under the mistaken impression that my friends possessed the same desires. Surprisingly enough, I was so engrossed in tales of romance that I devoted all my elegant dreams to thoughts of love between man and maid, and to marriage, exactly as though I were a young girl who knew nothing of the world. I tossed my love for Omi onto the rubbish heap of neglected riddles, never once searching deeply for its meaning. Now when I write the word love, when I write affection, my meaning is totally different from my understanding of the words at that time. I never even dreamed that such desires as I had felt toward Omi might have a significant connection with the realities of my life. — Yukio Mishima

Religion, philosophy, art - those three pillars on which the world has rested - were invented by man in order symbolically to encapsulate the idea of infinity, setting against it a symbol of its possible attainment (which in real terms is of-course impossible). Humanity has found nothing else on such an enormous scale. Admittedly man found it by instinct, without understanding why he needed God (easier that way!) or philosophy (explains everything, even the meaning of life!) or art (immortality). — Andrei Tarkovsky

NOTHING MAKES SENSE. Do not look for any sense in things. It is not there. It is you who ascribe it to what you live or get to know. A defeat or a victory is neither a message from the gods nor a trick of fate. Neither means anything - and, if they seem to, it is but an interpretation you yourself make of them - , inasmuch as things in themselves are only indifference and silence. So, do not waste your precious time in looking for signs everywhere around you. Try and interpret happenings, those which bleed and those which make you smile, as maturing experiences. Oh, yes, what is most important: live! — Camilo Gomes Jr.

After a while, meaning and implication detach themselves from everything. One can be a father and assume no obligations, it follows that one can be a boyfriend and do nothing at all. Pretty soon you can add friend, acquaintance, co-worker, and just about anyone else to the long list of people who seem to be part of your life, though there is no code of conduct that they must adhere to. Pretty soon, it seems unreasonable to be bothered or outraged by much of anything because, well, what did you expect? In a world where the core social unit - the family - is so dispensable, how much can anything else mean? — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Nothing makes sense anymore, because all the meaning and purpose that life had for them was associated with accumulating, succeeding, building, protecting, and sense gratification. It was associated with the outward movement and identification with form, that is to say, ego. Most people cannot conceive of any meaning when their life, their world, is being demolished. And yet, potentially, there is even deeper meaning here than in the outward movement. — Eckhart Tolle

The blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. — Chaim Potok

Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase, "Form is emptiness." That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase, "Emptiness is form." One should not think that these are two seperate things. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Nothing that happens is meant to happen or not meant to happen. The 'meant' is the story we tell ourselves that allows us to make sense of what is fundamentally senseless. Does this make our lives less important? Only if that's the story you want to tell yourself. Where do the stories end? They don't. It's stories all the way down. And all the way up. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

The term - 'Fairy-Tales' is so ironical in itself, when I sometimes sit to write love stories with a happy ending, it usually drags me into a dilemma whether, I should even begin with a love story at first place or not? Because honestly, I haven't seen many of them reaching climax, most of them just die out in the mid. Then comes the concept of fairy tales or what we say 'fiction', where nothing is impossible!
But over time, if I've realized something, it is that there's no such term called fiction when it comes to reality! Its harsh, in-your-face-sarcastic, ironical and highly irrational. You can't expect what's coming up next, and how it's going to blow you. In the real life, the entire meaning of fiction ceases to exist. Conclusively, we writers, deal with harsh reality and write lively fictions, this job in itself is so ironical but, that's life ... — Mehek Bassi

Writing, to me, is the meaning of life. My life became something special because of writing. My desk is for me what the phone booth is for Clark Kent: Here I become Superman. I can do anything I want when I'm writing. I'm not afraid anymore. I can take anything from my imagination. I can save the world when I'm writing. But as soon as I leave the desk, I become Clark Kent again. Trust me, I am the most ordinary person in the world. I'm a good husband, I don't yell at anyone, never lose it. But I don't have a single idea for my literature in everyday life. When I run, cook or relax on the beach, there is absolutely nothing on my mind. — Haruki Murakami

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. — Chaim Potok

JACK KIRBY is also the central personage of this novel because this is not a good novel. This is a seriously mixed-up book with a central personage who never appears. The plot, like life, resolves into nothing and features emotional suffering without meaning. — Jarett Kobek

In the recumbence of depression, your information-gathering system collates its intelligence and reports to you these facts: (1) there is nothing to do; (2) there is nowhere to go; (3) there is nothing to be; (4) there is no one to know. Without meaning-charged emotions keeping your brain on the straight and narrow, you would lose your balance and fall into an abyss of lucidity. And for a conscious being, lucidity is a cocktail without ingredients, a crystal clear concoction that will leave you hung over with reality. In perfect knowledge there is only perfect nothingness, which is perfectly painful if what you want is meaning in your life. — Thomas Ligotti

If a bell failed to ring, if a stove smoked, if a wheel on a machine stuck, you knew at once where to look and did so with alacrity; you found the defect and knew how to cure it. But the thing within you, the secret mainspring that alone gave meaning to life, the thing within us that alone is living, alone is capable of feeling pleasure and pain, of craving happiness and experiencing it- that was unknown. You knew nothing about that, nothing at all, and if the mainspring failed there was no cure. Wasn't it insane? — Hermann Hesse

In a sane world I should be a great man; as things are, in this curious establishment, I am nothing at all; to all intents and purposes I don't exist. I am just a Vox et preaterea nihil. — Aldous Huxley

See, if you analyze stuff long enough, you'll eventually break ideas down to the quantum level where nothing makes sense and there's no longer any meaning to anything. And then when you try to put it all back together again, you realize the pieces just don't fit anymore. Worse, you realize that the pieces never fit in the first place. And then you're left with a heap of broken ideas and beliefs that are shattered beyond repair. That's reality, and that's what I write about. — P.S. Baber

Nothing lasts long. We all come to life and gather allies and build empires and die, all in a single moment - maybe a single pulse of some giant processor somewhere. — Robin Sloan

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. This is our twelfth suggestion: Carry this message to other alcoholics! You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence when others fail. Remember they are very ill. Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends - this is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Nothing matters when you are dead, and, you are dead when nothing matters. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

During this time I came to understand a lot about myself, human beings, faith and the meaning of marriage and friendship. The world is not black and white, nothing is what it seems, and we are not cartoon characters that can be divided into goodies and baddies, but complex and multi-faceted beings with many weaknesses. Human beings will always disappoint. But God is there. He sometimes speaks through others and we would be wise to listen to those we trust and to our own inner voice, God's voice. No matter how difficult or painful life sometimes becomes, we must never lose faith.

We may not always find justice in this world, but compassion and forgiveness are such important qualities. They help us to dissolve so much of the negativity that we hold. Practising them mostly benefits ourselves. — Kristiane Backer

Nothing invests life with more meaning than the realisation that every moment of sentience is a precious gift — Steven Pinker

Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie. — Dean Koontz

When we compared our dream list to our "joy and meaning" list, we realized that by merely letting go of the list of things we want to accomplish and acquire, we would be actually living our dream - not striving to make it happen in the future, but living it right now. The things we were working toward did nothing in terms of making our life fuller. — Brene Brown

When you start with legal holiness, you have eyes only for the cross, and you never see that in Jesus Christ, nothing less than the eternal trinitarian life of Father, Son and Spirit is being lived out inside human existence. You never really get the staggering meaning of the incarnation. — C. Baxter Kruger

The Dopey Science Creed: 1. I maintain that my life has no purpose and no meaning. The same is true for the entire universe. There is no purpose to anything. 2. I affirm that my morals come from my genes and my conditioning, not from decisions I make. Free will is an illusion. My personal identity is an illusion. 3. There are no "good" deeds, or "good people." There is no "bad," "evil," or "wrong" either. 4. Every report of encounters with spirits, angels, ghosts, and supernatural beings is bunk. The credibility or number of witnesses doesn't matter - it's all bunk. 5. I am my physical brain and nothing more. The death of my body is the death of me. — Alex Tsakiris

Hate," says Roman. "It's such a small word. Four freaking letters. No big deal, right? Only, it is a big deal. People spend their entire lives holding on to it. Even if you no longer even remember the cause of the quarrel you hold on to that feeling because it becomes the only feeling you've ever known; because that feeling drives you towards achieving something and because it gives life meaning, gives you a sense of purpose. Without someone to hate you're just a burger-flipping failure who doesn't stand a chance. Without someone to hate you're just another millionaire, passing through life getting old and inching towards your death.
"Without hate, you're just nothing. — Sam Hunter