Naught Quotes & Sayings

Activists have not been passive. For decades, we have tried every tactic to shift the course of our governments. We have voted, written editorials and manifestos, donated money, held signs, protests in marches, blocked streets, shared links, signed petitions, held workshops, knitted scarves, learn to farm, turned off the television, programmed apps, engaged in direct action, committed vandalism, launched legal challenges against pipelines . . . and occupied the financial districts. All this has been for naught. A new approach to activism and a new kind of protest are desperately needed. — Micah White

Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There's naught in this life sweet But only melancholy; O sweetest melancholy! — John Fletcher

I have not hesitated to call the system of Government under which we are labouring 'satanic' and I withdraw naught out of it. — Mahatma Gandhi

I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it. — Jack Kerouac

The past is all patterns, and those patterns remain beneath our feet, even as the stars above reveal their own patterns - for the stars we gaze upon each night are naught but an illusion from the past. — Steven Erikson

Happiness is not to be found at the bottom of a bottle or from the tip of a needle; it is not to be found amidst a cloud of smoke or within a sugar-coated pill. If you look for it in these places, you will find naught but despair. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

At the edge of the avalanche
At the glacier's icy rim
Grows the flower of the snowfields
Trembling in the wintry wind.
It dares to live in edges
Where naught else would ever grow.
So fragile, so unlikely
An owl slices through this blow.
She dares the katabats
Her gizzard madly quivers,
But for her dearest of friends
She vows she shall deliver.
Like the lily of the avalanche
The glacier's icy rose
Like a flower of the wind
The bright fierceness in her glows.
The bravest are the small
The weakest are the strong
The most fearful find the courage
To battle what is wrong. — Kathryn Lasky

He, full of bashfulness and truth, loved much, hoped little, and desired naught. — Torquato Tasso

Time fleeth on,
Youth soon is gone,
Naught earthly may abide;
Life seemeth fast,
But may not last
It runs as runs the time. — Charles Godfrey Leland

Every moment of enjoyment
Brings to some one else a sorrow,
But your sorrow gladdens no one,
For from sorrow naught but sorrow springs. — August Strindberg

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime. — Emma Goldman

He who does not fear death cares naught for threats. — Pierre Corneille

Will they remember us, Aravan? Will Mankind remember us at all? ...
Mayhap, Gwylly, mayhap. Mayhap in their legends and their fables. Mayhap in naught but their dreams. — Dennis L. McKiernan

We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on. — Steven Erikson

Unicorns know naught of shame, or need, or doubt, or debt;
But mortals, as you may have noticed, take what they can get. — Peter S. Beagle

The true seeker hunts naught but the object of his quest, and the lover has no desire save union with his Beloved. — Baha'u'llah

Hope meets a dead end when the only chance in sight comes to naught. — Pawan Mishra

Too much to know is to know naught but fame. — William Shakespeare

Oz has changed," Gert said. "The trees don't talk. The Pond of Truth tells lies, the wandering Water stays put. The Land of Naught is on fire. People are starting to get old. People are forgetting how it used tone. — Danielle Paige

What's hard, it seems, is living up to the words spoken by Jesus Christ, who preached naught but love and mercy and justice and humility. — Steven Weber

Persist in that invocation until the unity of the world is subsumed for you in a single sphere, so that with the eye of your heart you will see naught in the two worlds save the One. — Ibn Ata Allah

Immortality - dazzling idea! who first imagined thee! Was it some jolly burgher of Nuremburg, who with night-cap on his head, and white clay pipe in mouth, sat on some pleasant summer evening before his door, and reflected in all his comfort, that it would be right pleasant, if, with unextinguishable pipe, and endless breath, he could thus vegetate onwards for a blessed eternity? Or was it a lover, who in the arms of his loved one, thought the immortality-thought, and that because he could think and feel naught beside! - Love! Immortality! — Heinrich Heine

Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind. (Messenger and Advocate Oct 1934 pp 14-16) — Oliver Cowdery

Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion.But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. — Emma Goldman

Prayer is naught else but a yearning of soul ... it draws down the great God into the little heart; it drives the hungry soul up to the plenitude of God; it brings together these two lovers, God and the soul, in a wondrous place where they speak much of love. — Mechthild Of Magdeburg

His wings, all six, shed embers of incandescent grace as he skidded across the night sky. And when he opened his mouths to scream, the Earth could do naught but shudder. — Ian Tregillis

In truth you owe naught to any man. You owe to all men. — Khalil Gibran

o each his Dulcinea, that he alone can name...to each a secret hiding place where he can find the haunting face to light his secret flame. For with his Dulcinea beside him, so to stand, a man can do quite anything, outfly the bird upon the wing, hold moonlight in his hand. Yet if you build your life on dreams, it's prudent to recall--a man with moonlight in his hand has nothing there at all. There is no Dulcinea, she's made of flame and air, and yet how lovely life would seem if ev'ry man could weave a dream to keep him from despair. To each his Dulcinea...though she's naught but flame and air! — Mitch Leigh

If she tried to speak, it would all come out: Her pain, her fear. Her anger. Her tears. And then her efforts to be strong for the boy would have been for naught. So she kept it in, a dam against a raging river. — James Dashner

Man's works do not even come close to the works of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit does not work, all the efforts of man will come to naught. — John Sung

O CHILDREN OF ADAM! Holy words and pure and goodly deeds ascend unto the heaven of celestial glory. Strive that your deeds may be cleansed from the dust of self and hypocrisy and find favor at the court of glory; for ere long the assayers of mankind shall, in the holy presence of the Adored One, accept naught but absolute virtue and deeds of stainless purity. This is the daystar of wisdom and of divine mystery that hath shone above the horizon of the divine will. Blessed are they that turn thereunto. — Baha'u'llah

Solitude is naught and society is naught. Alternate them and the good of each is seen. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mirror mirror on the wall, show the real me or naught at all. — Gautama Buddha

Shameless, impudent, meddling females, who presumed to set at naught the Society's prohibition on women's magic, and duped the common people with their potions and cantrips! — Zen Cho

She wanted to buckle, lie on her side and gasp like an eviscerated fish. She held her breath against it, but her mouth parted. She cared naught for living in the moment, but apparently her body was sensible. It wanted to breathe. — Julie Anne Long

Glory is like a circle in the water, which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, till by broad spreading, it disperses to naught. — William Shakespeare

In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost. — Sophie Swetchine

There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion. — George Gordon Byron

The suffering of his body is as naught to the joy of being free from the pain of being seen. — Helen Macdonald

Naught is possessed, neither gold, nor land nor love, nor life, nor peace, nor even sorrow nor death, nor yet salvation. Say of nothing: It is mine. Say only: It is with me. — D.H. Lawrence

But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself: If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy those others in their sleep, and there will be none to fight back; the earth shall be mine.
Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

Your prim faith in the True Sect's canon serves naught. The temple preaches a loveless morality that cares not one jot for the plight of our livelihood. The priests are fat parasites, theosophizing on their rumps while folk like us break our backs, milked dry by their tithes and their rote obligations. Where does their doctrine show the least concern for our chance to enjoy the fruits of our happiness? — Janny Wurts

True kinship has naught to do with blood ties, however strong they be. I think we are all kin, brothers and sisters one to the other, all children of all parents. — Lloyd Alexander

Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way! — Herman Melville

Men may the wise atrenne, and naught atrede. — Geoffrey Chaucer

Good night, captain, my lord,' he said. 'You took the chance, sir.'
'Did I so?' said Faramir.
Yes sir, and showed your quality: the very highest.'
Faramir smiled. 'A pert servant, Master Samwise. But nay: the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards. But there was naught in this to praise. I had no lure or desire to do other than I have done. — J.R.R. Tolkien

A moment of torture feels like an eternity, while an eternity of joy passes in a moment. Perhaps time is naught but an illusion. — Richelle E. Goodrich

As she observed him, she briefly frowned, it was one of the quandaries a woman sometimes faces, not just a woman, but all of us: she entrances one man without effort, a man who is undesired, who follows her around like a dog, however much he is whipped or abused, while all her efforts to attract and then ensnare another man, the truly desired man, come to naught. Charm is not universal, desire is too often unreciprocated, it gathers and pools in the wrong places, slowly becoming toxic. — Katie Kitamura

He that enjoys naught without thanksgiving is as though he robbed God. — Saint John Chrysostom

There will come a time', I said, 'when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this.'
I gestured encompassingly
'will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organis,s experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does.' -Hazel Grace Lancaster — John Green

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught. — Mark Twain

Individuals are prey to institutions in modern mass societies ... Individuals can struggle mightily against institutionalized conditions, but without changing the institutions themselves, those efforts will be largely for naught, since people
tire, lose focus, forget, and, eventually, give up their ghosts, while institutions share no such limitations. — Brian Awehali

All success in life comes to naught if it is laced with vanity. — Andy Paula

This is the sum of duty: do naught to others which if done to thee, would cause thee pain. — Vyasa

Are you my enemy? Are you strong, with speed and agility and the training of a warrior? It matters naught to me. Run now! Run fast into the forest! I'll give you a few moments' start - an hour, if you wish. But you will never be fast enough. I'll catch and kill you before long. — Joseph Delaney

Easy to see that naught save sorrow could bring a man to such a view of things. And yet a sorrow for which there can be no help is no sorrow. It is some dark sister traveling in sorrow's clothing. Men do not turn from God so easily you see. Not so easily. Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from. To imagine otherwise is to imagine the unspeakable. It was never that this man ceased to believe in God. No. It was rather that he came to believe terrible things of Him. — Cormac McCarthy

If there'd been anything decent in the house, anything approaching real ice cream, it would have been eaten long ago. I knew this, so I bypassed the freezer in the kitchen and the secondary freezer in the toolshed and went to the neglected, tundralike one in the basement. Behind the chickens bought years earlier on sale, and the roasts encased like chestnuts in blood-tinted frost, I found a tub of ice milk, vanilla-flavored, and the color of pus. It had been frozen for so long that even I, a child, was made to feel old by the price tag. Thirty-five cents! You can't get naught for that nowadays! — David Sedaris

O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only change. — James Russell Lowell

Dead calm, then a murmur, a name, a murmured name, in doubt, in fear, in love, in fear, in doubt, wind of winter in the black boughs, cold calm sea whitening whispering to the shore, stealing, hastening, swelling, passing, dying, from naught come, to naught gone — Samuel Beckett

There is no path to the future, Fitz. The path is now. Now is all there is, or ever will be. You can change perhaps the next ten breaths in your life. But after that, random chance seizes you in its jaws again. A tree falls on you, a spider bites your ankle, and all your grand plans for winning a battle are for naught. Now is what we have Fitz, and now is where we act to stay alive. — Robin Hobb

It must be so,-Plato, thou reasonest well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'T is the divinity that stirs within us; 'T is Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought! — Joseph Addison

That such a slave as this should wear a sword,
Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,
Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwain
Which are too intrinse t' unloose; smooth every passion
That in the natures of their lords rebel,
Being oil to the fire, snow to the colder moods,
Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters
Knowing naught, like dogs, but following. — William Shakespeare

he was ever alone now, set apart from those around him, separated by a divide he could see across but never cover. To be without family was a strange, unseeable prison, the bars of loneliness and rootlessness enclosing ever more tightly as years and experience accumulated, isolating a male such that he touched naught and naught touched him. Darius — J.R. Ward

And, Father, most of all, you taught
Me there's a Pow'r in love that naught
Can thwart, and that it moves where truth
And courage speak, and neither youth
Nor age can hinder its success,
But only fear and quietness. — John Piper

The latest mode from Paris, the gown had a devastatingly low, square-cut bodice accentuated with the tiniest bit of sheer, gold trim that barely concealed a hint of dusky nipple. If the viscount appreciated her well-endowed bosom, what harm in teasing from afar that which he could never touch? Deeming it naught but a bit of harmless flirtation with a charming rogue, Diana paid little heed to the fleeting notion that she might actually be playing with fire. — Victoria Vane

He should have told her that whatever her station in life - cook, housekeeper, companion, governess, whatever, it mattered naught to him so long as she exchanged it for the position of his baroness. And — Grace Burrowes

I find no peace, and all my war is done,
I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice;
I fly above the wind yet can I not arise;
And naught I have and all the world I seize on.
That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison,
And holdeth me not, yet can I scape nowise;
Nor letteth me live nor die at my devise,
And yet of death it giveth none occasion.
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain;
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;
I love another, and thus I hate myself;
I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain.
Likewise displeaseth me both death and life
And my delight is causer of this strife. — Thomas Wyatt

There scotsmen must have arses like leather,for while he ate I could see naught beneath his kilts but a pair of rather large balls , the secretary told him . - philippa — Bertrice Small

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.
I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place,
while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.
Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about. — John Henry Newman

Discipline is the greatest weapon against the self-righteous. We must measure the virtue of our own controlled response when answering the atrocities of fanatics. And yet, let it not be claimed, in our own oratory of piety, that we are without our own fanatics; for the self-righteous breed wherever tradition holds, and most often when there exists the perception that tradition is under assault. Fanatics can be created as easily in an environment of moral decay (whether real or imagined) as in an environment of legitimate inequity or under the banner of a common cause.
Discipline is as much facing the enemy within as the enemy before you; for without critical judgment, the weapon you wield delivers- and let us not be coy here- naught but murder.
And its first victim is the moral probity of your cause. — Steven Erikson

Unless we keep this planet healthy, everything else is for naught. — Victoria Principal

Happiness, thou art naught but an illusion. Thy enchantments are cast upon my eyes, my mind, my spellbound heart. Dependent upon nothing but thy victim's perception of thee, souls soar at thy artful hand! I have fallen in love with thy illusions, Happiness. Thou hast made me a part of them, and I am left delirious. — Richelle E. Goodrich

When I meet a wind I cannot fight , I can do naught but set my sails to let it take me where it will. — Susanna Kearsley

He brings to naught, destroys and rejects all that is not His own work; how He draws everything to Himself and absorbs it, that at last He may live and work in us and through us and reign alone as king. Happy the soul who refuses nothing to love, but places everything at His disposal, for only thus may all our works be done more and more in God. — Gerhard Tersteegen

Oh, the morrow of pain and dole Is naught while the sunlight lingers. — Kenneth Rand

The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realization. You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be failure. Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure. In this world, which is to say on the level of form, everybody "fails" sooner or later, of course, and every achievement eventually comes to naught. All forms are impermanent. — Eckhart Tolle

Sidonie, I know you don't remember it, but you once promised to trust me beyond all reason. And I swear to you that all that I am, all that I possess, including this gem-stone, is yours. I need you. I can't do this alone. Forget your memories. Look into your heart. And if you can find somewhere there, some lingering spark of trust that owes naught to reason, I beg you to speak the word written here. — Jacqueline Carey

The maids in my village talked of falling in love with a man at first sight. That has always seemed naught but foolishness to me. Until I enter Sister Serafina's workshop. It is unlike anything I have ever seen, full of strange sights and smells, and I tumble headlong into love. — R.L. LaFevers

Goats are naught but bones and bleating, and their hair was not warm nor their bodies soft. Of course, there was the smell, too, bitter as overripe vinegar, intrusive as bile. — Nancy E. Turner

The phrase 'for naught' is simply a fancy way of saying 'for nothing,' and it doesn't matter which phrase you use, for they are both equally difficult to admit. — Lemony Snicket

Races, better than we, have leaned on her wavering promise,
Having naught else but Hope. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
So long as man clamors for the I and the Mine, his works are as naught:
When all love of the I and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done.
For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put away.
The flower blooms for the fruit: when the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer, but is seeks it not within itself: it wanders in quest of grass. — Kabir

Why are you so prickly, English? Is it because I am a Scot?" "It's because you are overbearing, domineering, and pushy." "I am a man," he replied easily. "If men are allowed to behave in such an atrocious fashion, how are women supposed to act?" "Appreciative. And among my clan we like them demanding in bed," he added with a smile. When her gaze grew even cooler, he said, "You do not respond well to a jest. Be easy, Gwen Cassidy. I seek but to lighten your fears. You need fear naught, lass. I will care for you, despite your bad blood. Even the English can learn. On occasion," he added, just to provoke her. — Karen Marie Moning

All our dreams and hopes become as naught, and evil men are allowed to hang their lanterns on our tombstones. What greater folly is there? — James Lee Burke

Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them. — John James Audubon

Feelings come and feelings go,
And feelings are deceiving;
My warrant is the Word of God
Naught else is worth believing.
Though all my heart should feel condemned
For want of some sweet token,
There is One greater than my heart
Whose Word cannot be broken.
I'll trust in God's unchanging Word
Till soul and body sever,
For, though all things shall pass away,
HIS WORD SHALL STAND FOREVER! — Martin Luther

Will this be my life forevermore? Careful tea parties and the quiet fear that I don't belong, that I'm a fraud? I held magic in my hands! I tasted freedom in a land where summer doesn't end. I outsmarted the Rakshana with a boy whose kiss I still feel somehow. was it all for naught? I'd rather not have known any of it than have it snatched away after a taste. — Libba Bray

Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice! — Marquis De Sade

If I were in the unenviable position of having to study my work my points of departure would be the "Naught is more real ... " and the "Ubi nihil vales ... " both already in Murphy and neither very rational. — Samuel Beckett

All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One's values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lies his own ultimate reality. — George Harrison

What can rulers, nobility and all the lords of the earth say to justify the horrible killing and maiming of twenty or thirty million valuable men who a short while ago ploughed, dug, wove, built, guided the traffic of the world, took their pleasure, loved their fellows, cherished their families, and feared naught? — Helen Keller

Prayer is good: but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is naught but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism. — Charles Studd

Soldiers of Israel, we have no aims of conquest. Our purpose is to bring to naught the attempts of the Arab armies to conquer our land. — Moshe Dayan

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the winter breeze
A hundred miles away. — Robert Frost

Christ willed to suffer and be despised and do you dare complain of the same? Christ had adversaries and backbiters; and do you wish to have all men your friends and benefactors? When shall your patience attain her crown if no adversity befalls you? If you are willing to suffer naught that is against you, how will you be the friend of Christ? — Thomas A Kempis

Most people, they are afraid to believe in ghosts. Me, i'm afraid not to believe. Because, well, what then? If there really is nothing else- nowhere to go after this, no way to linger on this plane to finish unsettled business it we must, then that means each moment, each breath, each passing second, is as ethereal as the wind. It means all we do here on earth- the going and coming, the loving and hating- it is all for naught. So, no. Ghosts don't scare me. But no ghosts- that terrifies me. — John Searles

O, there is naught on earth worth being known but God and our own souls! — Philip James Bailey

Words are naught but wind, and the fairest promises like dreams that take flight with the morning. — Edouard Rene De Laboulaye

Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!
Ye shall grow a part
Of the laughing Sea;
Of the moaning heart
Of the glittered wave
Of the sun-gleam's dart
In the ocean-grave.
Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!
For that I love
Thy heart of stone!
From the heights above
To the depths below,
Where dread things move,
There is naught can show
A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!
Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone! — Voltairine De Cleyre

For though I tried to move his arm - unlock his bridegroom clasp - yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain. — Herman Melville