Nada

“ For what is it to thee, that shalt be as a blown-out flame? and all things in earth and heaven, and things past and things for to come, and life and death, and the mere elements of space and time, of being and not being, all shall be nothing unto thee; because thou shalt be nothing, for ever. ”

“ I come from nothingness and I am going to nothingness.”
“What is nothingness?”
“Everything. Nothingness is as far as your brains can think, my little princess; and then still farther, and nothingness is more than all that you see from this high tower. . . .”
“Are you never tired?”
“No, my wings are strong; I can bear all mankind on my back, and I could carry them away to the stars behind the stars.” ”

“ And I think of my Nothingness, and I ask myself were it not better to walk the earth an outcast, a solitary woman, and meet and face even these, than that each and every one of my woman-senses should wear slowly, painfully to shreds, and strain and break—in this unnameable Nothing? ”

“ In the meanwhile, the thunders of lust begin to roar, the lightnings of anger begin to play; envy, hatred, estrangement, violence, effeminacy, meanness, a quarrelsome disposition, a mind that hates justice,—all the blasts and tempests of perverse thoughts,—come bursting across our spiritual sky, Winds such as do not usually come from the bags of the Wind-God, rains such as are not ordinarily stored in the cisterns of our firmament, come sweeping over us. ”

“ Heaven and earth tire one. And then you find out that there truly is none. Nothing exists—neither sin, nor pain, nor desire—absolutely nothing. Only that exists which has some feeling. And for you, everything has feeling. ”

“ For there is no such thing as the road which they want to point out to us. And have not, as yet, all great human passions been similar passions for a nothingness? And all their ceremonies—ceremonies for a nothingness ? ”

“ On the one hand, there are those that seem to spring from dimly lit or dark feeling, to arise,—as it were, hydra-like, to sting and madden, or mist-like, to benumb all life, and turn it into mere drift and dreaming,—from out of the obscure, undrained, swampy places of human ignorance and passion. ”

“ Is it wonderful to risk that for which we care nothing?
In truth, nothing matters. This dirty little world full of confusion, and the blue rag, stretched overhead for a sky, is so low we could touch it with our hand. ”

“ It is strange, if—living here alone amid the snows, removed from the contagious vices of mankind, from the coarse sensuality, the brutality, the debasement too often found in the world, from the temptations, the struggles, the strife produced by want, envy, ambition, the love of gain; constantly familiar with the ever varying face of primitive nature, with her grandest and loveliest aspects—the mind be not elevated, and the soul pure. ”

“ That evil's harvest-field shall be this strand.
I, too, have sinned, have wronged my fellow-men,
Have raged against my kindred and myself.
But though All-gracious Heaven may deem my throes
And gloomy bondage full atonement's price
For what my waywardness has brought about,
I must do more; my honor and my fame
I must restore before my countrymen.
And in sublimity of earthly record
Become a fit companion to the souls
Of my beloved ones 'mid celestial spheres. ”

“ We immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! And it is only for your AFTERNOON, you, my written and painted thoughts, for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;—but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved—EVIL thoughts! ”

“ Passion flickered, waned, and, on a pause of doubt and misgiving, tenderness dawned—tenderness, pity, remorse, regret, a growing horror and anguish, a growing knowledge of Heaven forfeited, of Hell made sure, a crescent terror, and dismay unspeakable, and under it all tenderness deepening, deepening, deepening, like a flood pressing against a barrier that it must at last break down. ”

“ Nothing happened anywhere; house, garden, mind alike were barren, abortive, torn by the strife of frustrate impulse, ugly, hateful, sinful. Yet behind it all was still the desire of life--desire to escape--accomplish. ”

“ Miss P***, I’ve a favor to ask.—If ’tis true,
That “Nothing to Wear,” and “Nothing to Do,”
And “Nothing to Eat,” were all written by you,—
Let those three Nothings content you I pray,
Say nothing yourself; leave me “Nothing to Say.” ”

“ All low desires submerged and in an ecstasy that was not joy but perfect clarity he saw the misery and sorrow of the world, sounding its deeps of agony and loss, the ruin wrought by age, disease, and death,—the hopeless dark beyond. ”

“ This woman inhaled the common ether of a prosaic world, mingled it with her breath and sent it forth glorified as sound—sound such as nothing made with men's hands in all the world can produce. She created something divine, which died even as it was born, and passed into the silence—silence that has absorbed so many sweet and terrible things. ”

“ Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. ”

“ For it is still too joyful on this earth, many an illusion still blooms here—like the illusion of thy contemporaries about thee. We are not yet ripe to be hurled into thy nothingness: for we believe that we shall have a still more splendid time, when men once begin to understand thee, thou misunderstood, unconscious one! ”

“ In the writings of a recluse one always hears something of the echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself, there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. ”

“ Infinite, indeed, are their attacks, and innumerable the forms that they assume; but of all the shapes of misery, what is to be more dreaded, what is more terrible than thought to a vicious mind? And there he sat in thought, with the morning sunshine streaming around him, calm, and pure, and tranquil. ”

“ And a preponderance of pain would be possible and, in spite of it, a mighty will, a saying of yea to life, and a holding of this preponderance for necessary. "life is not worth living"; "resignation"; "what is the good of tears?" this is a feeble and sentimental attitude of mind. "Un monstre gai vaut mieux qu’un sentimental ennuyeux."
36. The philosophic nihilist is convinced that all phenomena are without sense and are in vain, and that there ought to be no such thing as being without sense and in vain. ”

“ What do you mean to the world? – Nothing!
Your existence is like smoke, – Nothing!
Two abysses are yawning from both sides,
And you are in between, just like them, – Nothing!
This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. ”

“ And when all the fearful particulars of her story are at length laid together, and we behold in connected order the image of her hapless existence, there is, in those dim recollections,—those feelings so simple, so impassioned and unspeakable, consuming the closely shrouded, woe-struck, yet ethereal spirit of the poor creature,—something which searches into the inmost recesses of the soul. ”

“ The vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain,—shew the deepest insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in depravity, by which it has been good-naturedly asserted, that ‘vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness.’ The story of this picture is in some parts very obscure and enigmatical. ”

“ It is a dream that still has power to charm the heart. But what of those of a different moral character—the chaff or waste of the world, or, to use still other images, the trees that bore no fruit, the salt that had no savor? ”

“ Above all, there was a miserable presentiment of coming evil—that expectation of ill which quickens the hearing, blinds the sight, and seems to clench the heart with a grasp that tightens at every strange sound, at every sudden silence. ”

“ Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. ”

“ But from time to time I enjoy even a greater threat: when I am allowed to give away my intellectual house and goods, like the confessor sitting in a corner and anxiously waiting for a distressed one to come and tell the misery of his thoughts, so that hand and heart may again be filled and the troubled soul eased. ”

“ Something—a passion, a mad desire—flickered into the man’s face, as if, for an instant, a hidden fire had leapt up. The next instant this was succeeded by the former cruel gaze of contempt and anger, the more intense because so icily controlled. ”

“ A moral night of deep despair
Descending shrouds her lonely mind.
For not to her Creation lends
Or blush of morn,—or beaming moon,
Nor pitying Knowledge makes amends
For step-dame Nature's stinted boon. ”

“ Nemo repente—no man ever suddenly became good. A moment’s spiritual agony may blunt our instincts and paralyse the evil in us—for a while, even as chloroform may dull our bodily sense; but for permanence there is no sudden turning of the mind; sudden repentances in life or death are equally impossible. ”

“ The No begins with the bestowing of blessings by the gods and their victory over the demons. A short love story follows, with possibly a bit of humor, and then a picture of the passing of life. The end is a gracious recognition of the favor of the gods. ”

“ Ye still carry about with you the valuations of things which had their origin in the passions and infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your love of "reality," for example—oh, that is an old, primitive "love"! In every feeling, in every sense-impression, there is a portion of this old love: and similarly also some kind of fantasy, prejudice, irrationality, ignorance, fear, and whatever else has become mingled and woven into it. There is that mountain! There is that cloud! What is "real" in them? ”

“ Can that fair planet, seemingly so pure and spotless, be inhabited by beings as frail and erring as ourselves? Can there be any sad souls there to- night— any who are weeping over blighted hopes and blasted prospects? It may be so; and yet perchance such a thing as a pang of sorrow and a burning tear are unknown, for it may be sin has never entered there. ”

“ The venturesome element in life, above all in the life of thought, only lent it a new charm. Though at first the large amount of accident and chaos in the world oppressed him, he came to say "dear accident," "beautiful chaos." ”

“ Belief in Inebriation.—Those men who have moments of sublime ecstasy, and who, on ordinary occasions, on account of the contrast and the excessive wearing away of their nervous forces, usually feel miserable and desolate, come to consider such moments as the true manifestation of their real selves, of their “ego,” and their misery and dejection, on the other hand, as the effect of the “non-ego”. This is why they think of their environment, the age in which they live, and the whole world in which they have their being, with feelings of vindictiveness. ”

“ Nor any God may torture us with false hopes of release!"
I spake again to Time:
"Thou liest in thy throat
All may change, or fall, or climb,
Yet all lives self-retained in change, tho' never so remote. ”

“ As far as the rest of life with its so-called "experiences" is concerned, which of us has even sufficient serious interest? or sufficient time? In our dealings with such points of life, we are, I fear, never properly to the point; to be precise, our heart is not there, and certainly not our ear. ”

“ So long as we have nothing to say to God, nothing to do with him, save in the sunshine of the mind when we feel him near us, we are poor creatures, willed upon, not willing; reeds, flowering reeds, it may be, and pleasant to behold, but only reeds blown about of the wind; not bad, but poor creatures. ”

“ By our own inconsiderateness and sensuousness, we live in a lie, in a false dream of permanence, and so in a sadder sense we walk in 'a vain show,'—deluding ourselves with the conceit of durability, and refusing to see that the apparent is the shadowy, and the one enduring reality God. ”

“ Nature and unconsciousness become impossible, and one is swallowed up in stagnant depths, or borne above them only with an inward, raging tempest of irrepressible loathing. A blessing rest upon this pen-point that stamps black and heavy into receptive paper the wrath which it is not lawful otherwise to express. ”

“ There is something very pitiful in that mute appeal of nature to be understood—like some sweet woman, smitten into a spell of suffering silence, till such time as the magic word shall release her. A word she knows, yet cannot, of her own power, speak. What magical mysteries shall not be revealed when speech is restored to her! And how her eyes plead and accuse at once! Of a verity, having ears we hear not: truly, having eyes to see, yet are we blind! ”

“ Resting her elbow on the mantel and her head upon her hand she looked thoughtfully into the grate for some minutes, and then broke the silence by saying, "There is very little in life worth living for." ”

“ The poets of this new condition of things, if they had sufficient leisure to write, would be dreaming of nothing but the blissful and loveless past, the divine selfishness of yore, and the wonderful possibilities in former times of remaining alone, not being run after by one's friends, and of even being hated and despised—or any other odious expressions which the beautiful animal world in which we live chooses to coin. ”