Nichts Quotes & Sayings

Let not things, because they are common, enjoy for that the less share of our consideration. — Pliny The Elder

Man must be an emptiness, a nothingness, which is not a pure nothingness (reines Nichts), but something that is to the extent that it annihilates Being, in order to realize itself at the expense of Being and to nihilate in being. Man is negating Action, which transforms given Being and, by transforming it, transforms itself. Man is what he is only to the extent that he becomes what he is; his true Being (Sein) is Becoming (Werden), Time, History; and he becomes, he is History only in and by Action that negates the given, the Action of Fighting and of Work - of the Work that finally produces the table on which Hegel writes his Phenomenology, and of the Fight that is finally that Battle at Jena whose sounds he hearts while writing the Phenomenology. And that is why, in answering the "What am I?" Hegel had to take account of both that table and those sounds. — Alexandre Kojeve

I feel like someone is pressing me into a mold that does not fit my body, forcing me intothe wrong shape. — Veronica Roth

We cannot escape fear. We can only transform it into a companion that accompanies us on all our exciting adventures. — Susan Jeffers

Survival, I know, is to begin again. — Judy Collins

Men have always shown a dim knowledge of their better potentialities by paying homage to those purest leaders who taught the simplest and most inclusive rules for an undivided mankind. — Erik Erikson

Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made. — Immanuel Kant

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

Because, what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can't spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.
Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes. Us, or anyone else. Because we're not comparing it with anything. — Hugh Laurie

There is nothing more fearful than imagination without taste.
[Ger., Es ist nichts furchterlicher als Einbildungskraft ohne Geschmack.] — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I have often thought that however learned you may talk about it, one knows nothing but what he learns from his own experience.
[Ger., Da dacht ich oft: schwatzt noch so hoch gelehrt,
Man weiss doch nichts, als was man selbst erfahrt.] — Christoph Martin Wieland

The prime minister's job is to captain his team, his party and his government. — John Bercow

I was willing to take on the struggle to establish myself in a new country because I knew that was the price I would have to pay for the freedom to think, speak, and write whatever I pleased. — Ji-li Jiang

I believe in finding a soulmate. — Scarlett Johansson

Chemicals were easier to procure than friends, and when I wanted to play with them they never said they had to stay home to wash their hair or, less politely, that they didn't associate with weirdos. — Leonard Mlodinow

Relationships do not preclude issues of morality. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Is this true? Those who had world' enough, that is, those engaged in a demanding daily vocation, were short of time while those without regular obligations had more than sufficient time, but no world? — Carolyn G. Heilbrun

I got a promo of 'Nichts Muss' in what would have been 2002 or 2003 and fell totally in love with it after listening to it on an airplane that took me to Australia via Taipei and Kuala Lumpur. — John Darnielle