Nothingness

“ Nothing in the review of life appears to us so pitiful as the absolute nothingness of the individual in the great mass of human existence. To each living, breathing, suffering atom, the consciousness of what it desires and suffers is so intense, and to every one else so faint. ”

“ It is one, it has nothing in common with nothing, nor is it like nothingness, nothing. All that is created is nothing, all far from and foreign to the soul. Could I but find myself one instant in that sphere of pure existence, I should regard myself as little as a worm. ”

“ Everything in the world is—how shall I put it?—these ideas are not easy, they tear at a person’s brain before they become clear!—everything in the world is on the edge, on the verge, of dissolving away into what people call nothingness. ”

“ 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 ? ”

“ 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! ”

“ But what then is left us, if the realistic definition of Being simply and rigidly applied, destroys its own entire realm, denies its own presuppositions, and shows us as its one unquestionable domain the meaningless wilderness of absolute Nothingness. ”

“ This swallowing up of life in nothingness, this obliteration of life by nothingness is what the emotion of malice ultimately desires. The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness. ”

“ Let that inform the sentiments and awaken the man's dormant sense of moral obligation, and by degrees he will learn the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense and the grandeur and bliss of a spiritual sense, which silences the material or corporeal. ”

“ Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come. ”

“ Infinity and Nothingness, for instance, are like; everything that lies between the two is like neither. Nothingness is stupidity; genius, Infinity. The lovers wrote each other the stupidest letters imaginable, putting down various expressions then in fashion upon bits of scented paper: ‘Angel! ”

“ Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the reality of things we have nothing to do, as we know nothing about them.’ These forms, if he will have it that they are but forms, affect us with pleasure and pain, just as if they were more real. ”

“ And nothing is, but what is not. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The will to live, of life conscious and unconscious, the physical instinct, cruel, wasteful, and careless—at times it seemed to her to make of human beings mere foolish puppets, without will or dignity. ”

“ Here, what I want is known to me by virtue of its contrast with what another wants, and this contrast, rendering relatively clear my consciousness of my own intent, tends, by its very existence, and by reason of the blindness of my passion, to inflame the opposition. In a more benign, but also, as I judge, in even a more primitive form, appears the simple contrast of ego and non-ego in all my imitative, or explicitly plastic and socially submissive, states of consciousness. ”

“ What being, potent in ill, had presumed to call him from the blessed regions of negation, the solemn quiet of being and knowing nothing, and compel him to live without, nay against his will, in misery such as only an imagination keen to look upon suffering, could have embodied or even invented? ”

“ Even his dreams have the flavour of a restless conscience. And yet in the reality of things this suffering from what is natural is entirely without foundation, it is only the consequence of opinions about things. ”

“ Yet, at the same time, he insists that there is in every soul "both a yes and a no," a vision of the good and a contrarium, a hunger for the universal will of God and a hunger for the particular will of self. ”

“ All powers of action are oppressed and crushed by one overwhelming image in the mind, and nothing is present to me, but that which is really future. Of things now about me I have no perception, being intent wholly on that which has yet no existence. ”

“ Then it is that he will feel, should he have before doubted, that he is not a mere part, a fraction, of his kind, but indeed a world; and though little in one sense, yet a world of awful magnitude in its capacity of suffering. ”

“ Often have I asked myself with anguish, on waking from that formless state of denuded, keenly sentient being, Which is the unreality?—the trance of fiery, vacant, apprehensive, skeptical Self from which I issue, or these surrounding phenomena and habits which veil that inner Self and build a self of flesh-and-blood conventionality? Again, are men the factors of some dream, the dream-like unsubstantiality of which they comprehend at such eventful moments? ”

“ he was doing nothing, thinking of nothing, looking at nothing; he was merely suffering. ”

“ If one ponder over the transcendental and wonderful character of this possibility, and turn from these considerations to look back on life, a light will then be seen to ascend, however dark and misty it may have seemed a moment before. ”

“ O, deluded heart!—ever bartering away substance for shadow!"
I grow philosophic sometimes. Thought will, now and then, take up a passing incident, and extract the moral. But how little the wiser are we for moralizing! we look into the mirror of truth, and see ourselves—then turn away, and forget what manner of men we are. ”

“ Chemistry of Ideas and Sensations.—Philosophical problems adopt in almost all matters the same form of question as they did two thousand years ago; how can anything spring from its opposite? for instance, reason out of unreason, the sentient out of the dead, logic out of unlogic, disinterested contemplation out of covetous willing, life for others out of egoism, truth out of error? ”

“ If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen. ”

“ I have every thing, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still, of nothing am I in want.” ”

“ To-day the bitter wind swept over me and around me and into the remote corners of my brain and swept away the delusions, and buffeted my philosophy with rough insolence.
The world is made up mostly of nothing. ”

“ In every hindrance of desire the sense of an ideal presence which is absent in fact, of an absent, in a word, which the only function of the present is to mean, is even more notoriously there. And in the movement of pure thought we have the same phenomenon. ”

“ Those problems that are known to none but Thee.
Bewildered and perplexed, I vainly strove
To find an answer to Life’s mystery.
Thus, step by step, the dangerous path I trod
Till like the fool, I said: “There is no God.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Always full of secret predetermination of what nature truth should be, so that you, indeed you, may accept it! Or do you think that to-day because you are frozen and dry as a bright winter morning, and nothing weighs on your mind, you have a keener sight? Does it not require ardour and enthusiasm to do justice to a creation of fancy? ”

“ And yet, though they seek to use only their reason, they despise reason. These philosophers look upon reason as the humble handmaiden of ecstasy. And that divine ecstasy is excited by the thought of a Nihilum. ”

“ This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught that “In everything there is one thing impossible—rationality!”
A LITTLE reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to star—this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed in all things! ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in the mood which I have above tried to depict, this feeling, or any other which is merely self-regarding, is lost sight of in the feeling which associates a future life with some solution of the burdensome problem of existence. ”

“ and, besides, nothing is worth doing except what the world says is impossible. ”

“ We are really for brief moments Primordial Being itself, and feel its indomitable desire for being and joy in existence; the struggle, the pain, the destruction of phenomena, now appear to us as something necessary, considering the surplus of innumerable forms of existence which throng and push one another into life, considering the exuberant fertility of the universal will. ”

“ For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. ”

“ If we admit such a process, the sensible being will not be one, but infinite; the difficulties encountered with only two parts, A and B, will be multiplied even to infinity, and so the sensible being will be not one but infinite, and every sensation infinite.
15. Here we find a very serious difficulty. If matter be incapable of perceiving, the soul of brutes is not material; if immaterial, it is a spirit, which cannot be admitted. ”

“ But as this negativity, instead of being external to Being, is its own dialectic, the truth of the latter, viz. Essence, will be Being as retired within itself,—immanent Being. That reflection, or light thrown into itself, constitutes the distinction between Essence and immediate Being, and is the peculiar characteristic of Essence itself. ”

“ The existence of such chaotic conditions is an indication that the mind is altogether unenlightened as to the real meaning and purpose of life, and their eradication is the beginning of a virtuous, steadfast, and enlightened life. ”

“ I believe that there is life everywhere—not material only, not merely what is palpable to our senses—but immaterial and invisible as well. We believe in our own immaterial essence—call it ‘soul,’ 302 or ‘spirit,’ or what you will. ”

“ Think of a curious nature, warped morally, as well as physically—do you know how those natures feel? A thousand times more strongly than the even, straight natures in everyday life. Then think of such a nature brought face to face with this awful problem. ”