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Nonentity Quotes

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Nonentity Quotes

“I do not deny God, because that word conveys to me no idea, and I cannot deny that which presents to me no distinct affirmation, and of which the would-be affirmer has no conception. I cannot war with a nonentity. If, however, God is affirmed to represent an existence which is distinct from the existence of which I am a mode, and which it is alleged is not the noumenon of which the word I represents only a speciality of phenomena, then I deny God, and affirm that it is impossible God can be.”

IfsIdeasWarWould BeExistenceImpossibleAtheismDenyPositive AtheismNo IdeaConceptionAffirmationBeing PositiveNonentity
Book:A Few Words About the Devil: And Other Biographical Sketches and Essays
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“Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later -- this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!”

WarMomentsEyeHumanityTurnsInterestPoorExistenceStruggleThousandEternalDrawsDefeatMiserableVanityTriumphBitternessWoundedStrifePettySpectatorsCrushedMorrowHumiliatedCollisionNonentity
Author:Nicolas Chamfort
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“In the loss of skill, we lose stewardship; in losing stewardship we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of Creation. It is possible - as our experience in this good land shows - to exile ourselves from Creation, and to ally ourselves with the principle of destruction - which is, ultimately, the principle of nonentity. It is to be willing in general for being to not-be. And once we have allied ourselves with that principle, we are foolish to think that we can control the results. (pg. 303, The Gift of Good Land)”

ThinkingShowsLosesLossResultsPrinciplesLandCreationWillingSkillsLosingDestructionFoolishNeighborhoodAlliesExileFellowshipStewardshipOutcastNonentity
Author:Wendell Berry
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“Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game 'or else people won't take it seriously'. Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world.”

PeopleIfsWorldLifeGamesPlayerSeriousEternalRaisedBridgesStakesCosmicEternal LifePenniesGood GodNonentity
Book:A Grief Observed
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“It's only in bad novels that people are divided into two camps and have nothing to do with each other. In real life everything gets mixed up! Don't you think you'd have to be a hopeless nonentity to play only one role all your life, to have only one place in society, always to stand for the same thing?--Ah, there you are!" - Larissa Fyodorovna in Doctor Zhivago.”

PeopleThinkingTwoRealPlayRolesNovelDoctorsReal LifeHopelessDividedCampsDoctor ZhivagoNonentity
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“If we refuse our homage to statues and frigid images, the very counterpart of their dead originals, with which hawks, and mice, and spiders are so well acquainted, does it not merit praise instead of penalty [Christians were punished for not worshiping Roman gods] that we have rejected what we have come to see is error? We cannot surely be made out to injure those whom we are certain are nonentities. What does not exist is in its nonexistence secure from suffering.”

IfsWellsDoeMadeChristianCertainSufferingReligiousPraiseOriginalsErrorsRefuseSecureMeritNot SureRejectedPenaltiesMiceSpidersStatuesHomageHawksCounterpartsFrigidNonentityRoman Gods
Author:Tertullian
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“Because of media hype and woefully inadequate information, too many people nowadays are deathly afraid of their food, and what does fear of food do to the digestive system? ... I, for one, would much rather swoon over a few thin slices of prime beefsteak, or one small serving of chocolate mousse, or a sliver of foie gras than indulge to the full on such nonentities as fat-free gelatin puddings.”

PeopleDoeMediaInformationFatsServingChocolatePrimeIndulgeInadequateHypePuddingNonentityDigestive SystemGelatinChocolate Mousse
Author:Julia Child
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“What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”

PeopleIfsShouldHeartPersonsShowsEyePositionOne DayLowsLowestEccentricNonentityUnpleasant Person
Author:Vincent Van Gogh
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“A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.”

MenKindMatterGovernmentPoliticsGroupsDutyIntellectualOrdinaryBottomPracticalsSuperiorsLazinessInferiorsNonentityIntellectual Laziness
Book:Minority Report
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“Such is life, my fellow-mummers-just like a poor player that bluffs and feints his hour upon the stage, and then cheapens down to mere nonentity. But let me not hear any small witticism to the further effect that its story is a tale told by a vulgarian, full of slang and blanky, signifying-nothing.”

ArtStoriesHoursPoorPlayerEffectsStageLet MeFellowsMereTalesSlangBluffsSignifyingNonentitySuch Is Life
Book:The annotated Such is life: such is life : being certain extracts from the diary of Tom Collins
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