Quotes & Sayings About Nothing Being What It Seems

I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it. — Margaret Atwood

You told me trees could speak
and the only reason one heard
silence in the forest
was that they had all been born knowing different languages.

That night I went into the forest
to bury dictionaries under roots,
so many books in so many tongues
as to insure speech.

and now this very moment,
the forest seems alive
with whispers and murmurs and rumblings of sound
wind-rushed into my ears.

I do not speak any language
that crosses the silence around me
but how soothing to know
that the yearning and grasping embodied
in trees' convoluted and startling shapes
is finally being fulfilled
in their wind shouts to each other.

Yet we who both speak English
and have since we were born
are moving ever farther apart
even as branch tips touch. — Carol Goodman

I like to think about society as being a flock of birds: There seems to be a common consciousness in different time periods, and the new common consciousness reacts to the old standards. — Penelope Spheeris

On the movie side of things, the difficulties come with so few movies being made, and when they are, it seems that it's a marketing game. Story sometimes takes a backseat to that one grand marketing idea. — Jim Rash

I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered. — Stendhal

But you also admitted to her being in the shadows and not having a clear view of him."
"What would be his motive?"
"Perhaps he saw me kissing Mary."
"Killing the man for kissing your betrothed seems a bit drastic."
I would, he thought, surprised by the vehement behind the words. — Lorraine Heath

An icon means nothing to me. I don't understand what it means to anybody actually. It seems like a word of convenience. It seems to attend to the huge success of certain kinds of movies that I did, but there's no personal utility in being an icon. I don't know what an icon does, except stand in a corner quietly accepting everyone's attention. I like to work, so there's no utility in being an icon. — Harrison Ford

It all seems so worthless. Such a waste of lives. We've spent hundreds of years since the Return buffering the Dark City and trying to maintain it - scraping out a life that will soon be wiped out.
And what of the rest of the world that's already fallen? Stars blinking away, their light slowly fading? Somewhere out there a star's just dying and we'll never know about it. Somewhere another's being born whose light we'll never see.
The Earth will spin, the stars will rearrange themselves around one another and the world will crawl with the dead who one day will drop into nothing ness: no humans left for them to scent, no flesh for them to crave. Everything-all of us-will simply cease to be. — Carrie Ryan

So it comes about that the war [World War I] seems, to us, to have been fought less over territory than the way it would be remembered, that the war's true subject is remembrance. Indeed the whole war - which was being remembered even as it was fought, whose fallen were being remembered before they fell - seems not so much to be tinted by retrospect as to have been fought retrospectively. — Geoff Dyer

Some days, being J.D. Salinger seems like a good idea. — Fred Smith

Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died ... He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life ... Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense. — Jhumpa Lahiri

For it is beyond doubt that there is nothing which more shocks our reason than to say that the sin of the first man has rendered guilty those, who, being so removed from this source, seem incapable of participation in it. This transmission does not only seem to us impossible, it seems also very unjust. For what is more contrary to the rules of our miserable justice than to damn eternally an infant incapable of will, for a sin wherein he seems to have so little a share, that it was committed six thousand years before he was in existence? Certainly nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine; and yet, without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. The knot of our condition takes its twists and turns in this abyss, so that man is more inconceivable without this mystery than this mystery is inconceivable to man. — Blaise Pascal

Our longing for community seems to be a part of the image of the One Who made us, a part of the divine image whispered into us when we were whispered into being in the first place. — Robert Benson

Every time I create something, whether an idea or a work of art, initially, its supposed completion seems absolutely perfect to me. However the more I think about it, stare it down, the more it marinates in my soul over the hours, days, and weeks, the more flaws I start to find in it; and finally, the more I'm pressed to continue enhancing it. It essentially turns out that whatever thing a flawed and imperfect, human eye once thought was amazing begins to appear quite wretched. This is why, eternally, God cannot be impressed by mere talents or by mortal achievements. To perfect eyes, I imagine that great is not really that great; rather, humility is ultimately a human being's true greatness. — Criss Jami

Anyone, without any great penetration, may distinguish the dispositions consequent on wealth; for its possessors are insolent and overbearing, from being tainted in a certain way by the getting of their wealth. For they are affected as though they possessed every good; since wealth is a sort of standard of the worth of other things; whence every thing seems to be purchasable by it. — Aristotle.

Sometimes Holly could start to see the order in things, she got a glimmer of a pattern. And that thing everyone seems to say these days, about how things always happen for a reason- Holly was getting close to being willing to concede that that was maybe, possibly true. — Sarah Dunn

It seems that just Being, the sheer fact of existence, that there is something rather than nothing, already inspires a wonder akin to religion. But - as in my comment about the Kingdom of God in the last answer - Jewish and Christian traditions are also prepared to challenge what 'is' for the sake of what could be. — George Pattison

I admire Ginsberg as a poet, despite the fact that he seems not to know when he is being good and when he is bad. But he will last, or at least those poems will last. — Leslie Fiedler

fools continue to send fools and crooks to Washington to make stupid self-serving laws to make themselves rich, with no idea whatsoever what the word 'work' truly means, this had to happen. No, it wasn't quick but it seems so to those who had no ability to see and understand what was being done to our nation, our people and our way of life because so many could only live paycheck to paycheck. — T.J. Reeder

Being paid to wonder seems like a heavy responsibility at times. — Hope Jahren

It's hard to keep going when it seems like you're not getting anywhere, but you'll never succeed if you stop. Those of us with a dream that seems so far from being realized must remember that the road is long, but only those who stay on the path will reach their destination. — Thomas Mann

There seems to be an unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments. How can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price of linseed, the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit petty expenses and charge for carriage paid? The soul ties its shoes; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous. — Walter Bagehot

It seems like a necessary balance to life, being part of the community. — Eddie Vedder

Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "It just is."
Istigkeit - wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The Being of Platonic philosophy - except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were - a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence. — Aldous Huxley

I think ghostliness is a good quality. I pretend I'm dead all the time."
"What?" He stopped rummaging through his locker to look at me full in the face a last.
"It helps me go to sleep," I said.
"That shows you don't know anything about death," Jonah said.
"Do you?" I asked.
He hesitated before saying "I'm a g-g-g-ghost, aren't I?"
"I think being dead might be nice. Restful."
"Death is not restful. It's nothing."
"That's what seems restful to me," I said. "The nothing. Not being here. Not being anywhere. — Natalie Standiford

On bad days I talk to Death constantly, not about suicide because honestly that's not dramatic enough. Most of us love the stage and suicide is definitely your last performance and being addicted to the stage, suicide was never an option - plus people get to look you over and stare at your fatty bits and you can't cross your legs to give that flattering thigh angle and that's depressing. So we talk. She says things no one else seems to come up with, like let's have a hotdog and then it's like nothing's impossible.
She told me once there is a part of her in everyone, though Neil believes I'm more Delirium than Tori, and Death taught me to accept that, you know, wear your butterflies with pride. And when I do accept that, I know Death is somewhere inside of me. She was the kind of girl all the girls wanted to be, I believe, because of her acceptance of "what is." She keeps reminding me there is change in the "what is" but change cannot be made till you accept the "what is. — Tori Amos

Everest silences you ... when you come down, nothing seems worth saying, nothing at all. You find the nothingness wrapping you up, like a sound. Non-being. You can't keep it up, of course. the world rushes in soon enough. What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue. — Salman Rushdie

If we separate our mundane needs (doing) from God's best gift, his loving presence (being), then we are overspiritualizing prayer. If we ask nothing of God, we are left adrift in an evil world. Such a position may feel spiritual because it seems unselfish, but it is unbiblical because it separates the real world of our desires from God's world. The kingdom can't come because it is floating. By discounting the spiritual and physical worlds, Neoplatonism did exactly what the Enlightenment did. The only difference was Neoplatonism valued the spiritual while the Enlightenment valued the physical. So the church is influenced by Neoplatonism (the physical isn't important), and the world is shaped by the Enlightenment (the spiritual isn't important). Both perspectives stifled honest, person-to-person praying in the church. — Paul E. Miller

From this moment on, nothing is what it seems. You're not a human being, you're a character- and filmmakers are doing everything in their power to kill you even now.
Supernatural powers and curses are real, and numbers like 666 and 237 can kill you just as easily as a butch knife.
Log cabins are slaughterhouses, cornstalks are antennas for evil, and aliens never, ever come in peace. — Seth Grahame-Smith

There's nothing surprising about a Catholic being Islamophobic or a Muslim being Cathophobic - that is precisely what their religious shepherds ask them to be. Disapproval of the other guy's religion is the daily bread of clerics of all creeds, and nobody seems to be bothered by it. Priests, imams, and rabbis have the right to be Islamophobic, Judeophobic, or Cathophobic without reprimand. — Charb

Well, think about it for a minute. A guy tells you that he loves you and then turns around and buys you flowers ... or worse, tells you that he loves you with flowers. Cut flowers die. They die in a few days after being cut ... and this is what you guys choose to use as proof of your love? Something that dies in a few days? To me it seems like foreshadowing or something, like your basically saying that our love is beautiful but only for a limited time and then it will wither away to nothing like your flowers. — Jennifer Snyder

how often do we forget that there is hope as well, and that we seldom think about hope? We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, 'What's the good of doing anything?' Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age. We have made ourselves a Welfare State, which has given us freedom from fear, security, our daily bread and a little more than our daily bread; and yet it seems to me that now, in this Welfare State, every year it becomes more difficult for anybody to look forward to the future. Nothing is worth-while. Why? Is it because we no longer have to fight for existence? Is living not even interesting any more? We cannot appreciate the fact of being alive. Perhaps we need the difficulties of space, of new worlds opening up, of a different kind of hardship and agony, of illness and pain, and a wild yearning for survival? Oh — Agatha Christie

That the objective world would exist even if there existed no conscious being certainly seems at the first blush to be unquestionable because it can be thought in the abstract, without bringing to light the contradiction which it carries within it. But if we desire to realize this abstract thought, that is, to reduce it to ideas of perception, from which alone (like everything abstract) it can have content and truth, and if accordingly we try to imagine an objective world without a knowing subject, we become aware that what we then imagine is in truth the opposite of what we intended, is in fact nothing else than the process in the intellect of a knowing subject who perceives an objective world, is thus exactly what we desired to exclude. For this perceptible and real world is clearly a phenomenon of the brain; therefore there lies a contradiction in the assumption that as such it ought to exist independently of all brains. — Arthur Schopenhauer

,dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw.
Chapter I. — Chuck Palahniuk

Te is thus the natural miracle of one who seems born to be wise and humane, comparable to what we call "perfect specimens" of flowers, trees, or butterflies - though sometimes our notions of the perfect specimen are too formal. Thus Chuang-tzu enlarges on the extraordinary virtue of being a hunchback, and goes on to suggest that being weird in mind may be even more advantageous than being weird in body. He compares the hunchback to a vast tree which has grown to a great old age by virtue of being useless for human purposes because its leaves are inedible and its branches twisted and pithy.5 Formally healthy and upright humans are conscripted as soldiers, and straight and strong trees are cut down for lumber; wherefore the sage gets by with a perfect appearance of imperfection, such as we see in the gnarled pines and craggy hills of Chinese painting. — Alan W. Watts

No matter how much Theo achieves and acquires and out-dazzles everyone else, she never seems content. She's taught you that people who shine more lavishly that everyone else seem to be penalized by discontent, as if they're being punished for craving a brighter life. I've been knocked down so many times I can't remember the number plates, she said once. — Nikki Gemmell

It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man's life - the priceless moments that will never come back to him again - being wasted in a mere brutish sleep. — Jerome K. Jerome

When I use people I know, all of my instincts seem to go dead, and if I'm getting anywhere near myself then I can't do it. It's actually a real weakness! I hate writing personal essays, I don't think I'm especially good at it. I like just encountering [my characters], discovering them. I love the escape of just being surrounded by all these people who are nothing like people I know. But I don't find it hard to be in the middle of a different life, with a different set of habits and way of thinking and talking. That seems to come easily to me. — Jennifer Egan

All too often we say of a man doing a good job that he is indispensable. A flattering canard, as so many disillusioned and retired and fired have discovered when the world seems to keep on turning without them. In business, a man can come nearest to indispensability by being dispensable in his current job. How can a man move up to new responsibilities if he is the only one able to handle his present tasks? It matters not how small or large the job you now have, if you have trained no one to do it as well, you're not available; you've made your promotion difficult if not impossible. — Malcolm Forbes

Love seems to be the appreciation that we are all little lumps in the same earthly soup which is a little lump in a larger cosmic soup. So, love is an awareness of this beautiful energetic relationship and a natural appreciation of this situation. It doesn't seem to be a matter of finding love ... it's a matter of being aware of it. It's not a question of invention but rather discovery. — Ken Dychtwald

I'd write and read and let myself, a little at a time, step down into myself- like a stairway down into a dark, intimate kiva- where the work of vigil is taking place, the necessary attending. I imagine there's a little fire burning in there, a few steadily glowing embers, and a quiet chant going on, from me, from some singer in me, honoring and accompanying W's soul, which is with him as he is making his passage..there's a leavetaking in process, a movement towards increasing simplicity, away from complexity, activity, expectation. The bout of paranoia, with a childlike quality of being threatened, seems part of that-like a day or two when he couldn't just let go and float on the energies of other people, who are bearing him up-but had to doubt them, struggle. So much better when he can trust and float. There's enough love around him to carry him now ... — Mark Doty

The self that does not survive scrutiny is the subject of experience in each present moment - the feeling of being a thinker of thoughts inside one's head, the sense of being an owner or inhabitant of a physical body, which this false self seems to appropriate as a kind of vehicle. Even if you don't believe such a homunculus exists - perhaps because you believe, on the basis of science, that you are identical to your body and brain rather than a ghostly resident therein - you almost certainly feel like an internal self in almost every waking moment. And yet, however one looks for it, this self is nowhere to be found. It cannot be seen amid the particulars of experience, and it cannot be seen when experience itself is viewed as a totality. However, its absence can be found - and when it is, the feeling of being a self disappears. — Sam Harris

It has been said in this courtroom that only a human being can be free. It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom. — Isaac Asimov

I'm trying to find a way to eat up time without being destructive, 'cause that's my go-to, it seems. — Shia Labeouf

Being is unrecognizable unless it manages to seem, and seeming is feeble unless it manages to be. — Gorgias

Sometimes I feel like there's a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean. The moon tonight, there's a circle around it. Sign of trouble not far behind. I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting. But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing... I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don't know. Maybe I had my happiness. I don't want to believe it but, there is no man, Gilly. Only that moon. — Alice Hoffman

The stories people tell you about themselves seem to retain the possibility of being false. But what you discover about them by yourself seems to be the truth. — John Verdon

When you feel thankful, you can be appreciative for a moment, then not at all the next. It seems the tank is full, then it becomes empty, and the cycle continues. If you don't feel the same gratitude for a moment, know that it's possible in the next moment that comes around. — J.R. Rim

Where there seems to be a difference between guys being nuts and women being nuts is that guys are much more open in calling each other on stuff; lots of insults and dirty names. Whereas women will talk frankly and honesty, but there also seems to be more passive aggressiveness. — Paul Feig

The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive. — William Shenstone

As an actor, you're constantly searching for that great character. Also, being a history buff and learning about people in our past and amazing things that they've done, I came across a book about Howard Hughes and he was set up as basically, the most multi-dimensional character I could ever come across. Often, people have tried to define him in biographies, but no one seems to be able to categorize him. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Seems like a lot of my generation as a whole is more concerned with being the cool kid; sarcastic, smug, or just all together impenetrable. So anyway, it's not always comfortable to be like, the dorky, happy girl at the party ... but that's me. — Hayley Williams

Freedom, "that terrible word inscribed on the chariot of the storm," is the motivating principle of all revolutions. Without it, justice seems inconceivable to the rebel's mind. There comes a time, however, when justice demands the suspension of freedom. Then terror, on a grand or small scale, makes its appearance to consummate the revolution. Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. But one day nostalgia takes up arms and assumes the responsibility of total guilt; in other words, adopts murder and violence. — Albert Camus

What is wrong? Is this related to the notice I received from Queen Windermere that a war was being beta-tested, and might be cleared for release? I do not have time to allow my coders to be slaughtered. It seems very inefficient. — Seanan McGuire

There is nothing so nice as supposing. It's almost like being a fairy. If you suppose anything hard enough it seems as if it were real. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

The regularity with which we conclude that further advances in a particular field are impossible seems equaled only by the regularity with which events prove that we are of too limited vision. And it always seems to be those who have the fullest opportunity to know who are the most limited in view. What, then, is the trouble? I think that one answer should be: we do not realize sufficiently that the unknown is absolutely infinite, and that new knowledge is always being produced. — Willis R. Whitney

It seems whether we have a tendency towards being flexible or structured affects how we create, how we parent, how we work. — Philippa Perry

At the exact moment any decision seems to be being made, it's usually long after the real decision was actually made
like light we see emitted from stars. — Richard Ford