concerning

nothing…
I have nothing to say and
I am saying it and that
is poetry as I need it.
John Cage - lecture on nothing - 1959

Nothing is
But what is not
William Shakespeare - Macbeth - I/iii
There is nothing either
good or bad, but
thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare - Hamlet - II/ii

Nothing will come of

nothing
William Shakespeare - King Lear - I/i
Events were simply dissolved
into the air,
as all events are.
Alan Kaprow - interview 1988

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his
hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare - Macbeth - V/v
 An early minimalist piece, in the
sense that things happen with large
spaces of nothing around them, or
they overlap unexpectedly into
clusters that suddenly shut off.
Alan Kaprow

Nothing is impossible to
a willing hart.
John Heywood - Proverbes. Part I. Chap. iv.
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And having nothing, yet hath all.
Sir Henry Wotton - The Character of a Happy Life.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on

this piece of naiveté rests all
aesthetics, it is the first truth of
aesthetics. Let us immediately add its
second: nothing is ugly but degenerate
man - the domain of aesthetic judgment
is therewith defined.
Friedrich Nietzsche
 We can say nothing but
what hath been said.
Robert Burton - Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.

No, I regret nothing, all

I regret is having been
born, dying is such a
long tiresome business I
always found. Samuel Beckett
 He knows nothing and thinks he
knows everything. That points
clearly to a political career.
George Bernard Shaw

Nothing is impossible; there are ways

that lead to everything, and if we had
sufficient will we should always have
sufficient means. It is often merely
for an excuse that we say things are
impossible.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nothing is pleasant that is not
spiced with variety.
Francis Bacon

Every word is like an

unnecessary stain on silence and
nothingness.
Samuel Beckett - interview 1969

There is poetry as soon as we

realize that we possess nothing.
John Cage
 Eternal nothingness is fine if
you happen to be dressed for it.Woody Allen

Who cannot give good counsel? ’T

is cheap, it costs them nothing.
Robert Burton - Anatomy of Melancholy. Part ii. Sect. 2, Memb. 3.

Philosophy is nothing
but discretion.John Selden - Table Talk. Philosophy.
Wise men say nothing in
dangerous times.
John Selden - Table Talk. Wisdom.

Attempt the end, and

never stand to doubt;
Nothing’s so hard but
search will find it out.
Seek and Find.
Robert Herrick
 Nothing can cover his
high fame but heaven;
No pyramids set off his memories,
But the eternal substance of his
greatness,—
To which I leave him.
Beaumont and Fletcher The False One. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Fame sometimes hath

created something of
nothing.
Thomas Fuller - Fame.
 Nothing is there to come,
and nothing past,
But an eternal now
does always last.
Abraham Cowley - Davideis. Book i. Line 25.

Death in itself is nothing;

but we fear
To be we know not what,
we know not where.
John Dryden - Aurengzebe. Act iv. Sc. 1.
’T is not for nothing that we life pursue;
It pays our hopes with something still
that’s new.
John Dryden - Aurengzebe. Act iv. Sc. 1.

While man is growing, life is in decrease;

And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
Edward Young - Night Thoughts. Night v. Line 717.

Our Constitution is in actual

operation; everything appears to
promise that it will last; but in
this world nothing is certain but
death and taxes.
Benjamin Franklin - Letter to M. Leroy, 1789.
 If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies,
And they are fools who roam.
The world has nothing to bestow;
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home.
Nathaniel Cotton - The Fireside. Stanza 3.

A Frenchman must be always talking, whether

he knows anything of the matter or not; an
Englishman is content to say nothing when he
has nothing to say.
Samuel Johnson - Life of Johnson

Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in

everything.
Laurence Sterne - Sermon xxvii.
Rich windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.
Thomas Gray - A Long Story.

Henceforth the majesty of God revere;

Fear Him, and you have nothing else to
fear.
James Fordyce - Answer to a Gentleman who apologized to the Author for Swearing.

There’s nothing like being used to a

thing.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan - The Rivals. Act v. Sc. 3.
Certainly nothing is unnatural
that is not physically
impossible.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan - The Critic. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Better to love amiss than

nothing to have loved.
George Crabbe - Tales. Tale xiv. The Struggles of Conscience.

Avoid shame, but do not seek glory,—

nothing so expensive as glory.
Sydney Smith - Lady Holland’s Memoir. Vol. i. p. 88.
 Nothing except a battle lost
can be half so melancholy
as a battle won.
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington - Despatch, 1815.

A primrose by a river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
William Wordsworth

Strongly it bears us along in swelling and

limitless billows;
Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky
and the ocean.
Taylor Coleridge - The Homeric Hexameter.
But there’s nothing half
so sweet in life
As love’s young dream.
Thomas Moore - Love’s Young Dream.

This world is all a fleeting show,

For man’s illusion given;
The smiles of joy, the tears of woe,
Deceitful shine, deceitful flow,—
There ’s nothing true but Heaven.
This World is all a fleeting Show.
Thomas Moore
 Let our object be our country, our whole
country, and nothing but our country.
Daniel Webster - Address on laying the Corner-Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, 1825. P. 78.

There is nothing so powerful as

truth,—and often
nothing so strange.
Daniel Webster - Argument on the Murder of Captain White, April 6, 1830. Vol. vi. p. 68.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever;

Its loveliness increases;
it will never
Pass into nothingness. John Keats - Endymion. Book i.
Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.
Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay - On Niccolo dei Machiavelli. 1825.

The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

Sir Henry Taylor - Philip Van Artevelde. Part i. Act i. Sc. 5.

Sooth ’t were a pleasant life to lead,

With nothing in the world to do
But just to blow a shepherd’s reed,
The silent season thro’
And just to drive a flock to feed,—
Sheep—quiet,
Laman Blanchard - Dolce far Niente. Stanza 1.
 Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Each and All.

Nothing can bring you peace

but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance.

We do not count a man’s years until he

has nothing else to count
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Old Age.
.
 Nothing great was ever
achieved without
enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Circles.

Nothing that is can pause or stay;

The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Keramos.
Perched upon a bust of Pallas,
just above my chamber door,—
Perched, and sat,
and nothing more.
Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven.

Dreams of doing good

For good-for-nothing people.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Aurora Leigh. Book ii.

This laurel greener from the brows

Of him that uttered nothing base.
Alfred Tennyson Tennyson - To the Queen.
Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet!
Nothing comes to thee new or strange.
Sleep full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.
Alfred Tennyson Tennyson - To J. S.

It went to pieces all at once—

All at once and nothing first,
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
Oliver Wendell Holmes - The Deacon’s Masterpiece.

Man never falls so low that he can see

nothing higher than himself.
Theodore Parker - Essay. A Lesson for the Day.
A world where nothing is
had for nothing.
Arthur Hugh Clough - Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.

Nothing can happen

more beautiful
than death.
Walt Whitman - Starting from Paumanok. 12.
I swear I think there is nothing
but immortality!
Walt Whitman - To think of Time. 9.

Really and truly—I’ve nothing to wear.

William Allen Butler - Nothing to Wear.

Of nothing comes nothing: springs rise not above

Their source in the far-hidden heart of the
mountains:
Whence then have descended the Wisdom and Love
That in man leap to light in intelligent
fountains?
John Townsend Trowbridge - The missing Leaf.
There is nothing the body suffers that
the soul may not profit by.
George Meredith - Diana of the Crossways.

Morality knows nothing of

geographical boundaries or
distinctions of race.
Herbert Spencer - The Evanescence of Evil.

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising

than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it
in one place to-day, it is vain to seek it there to-morrow.
You can not lay a trap for it.
Alexander Smith - City Poem: The Fear of Dying.
 A world made to be lost,—
A bitter life ’twixt pain and nothing
tost.
William Morris - The Earthly Paradise. The Hill of Venus.

All creeds and opinions are nothing but

the mere result of chance and
temperament.
Joseph Henry Short house - John Inglesant.

Nothing but the infinite Pity is

sufficient for the infinite pathos of
human life.
Joseph Henry Short house - John Inglesant.
 Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-
withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and
offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea
and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath
Sidney Lanier - The Marshes of Glynn.

He knew the precise

psychological moment when to
say nothing.
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray.
 Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes
To keep one from going nude.
Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. T- he Pessimist.

That man may last, but never lives,

Who much receives, but nothing gives;
Whom none can love, whom none can thank,—
Creation’s blot, creation’s blank.
Anon.

A sound so fine, there’s

nothing lives
’Twixt it and silence. Anon.
They see nothing wrong in the rule
that to the victors belong the
spoils of the enemy.Anon.

Honest men esteem and value nothing so

much in this world as a real friend.
Bidpai - Choice of Friends. Chap. iv.

Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and

hears all things, and discloses all.
Sophocles - Hipponous. Frag. 280.
A woman should be good for everything at home,
but abroad good for nothing.
Euripides - Meleager. Frag. 525.

It was not for nothing that

the raven was just now
croaking on my left hand.
Plautus - Aulularia. Act iv. Sc. 3, 1. (624.)

Nothing is there more friendly to a man than a

friend in need.
Plautus - Epidicus. Act iii. Sc. 3, 44. (425.)
 Do not they bring it to pass by knowing
that they know nothing at all?
Terence - Andria. The Prologue. 17.

In fine, nothing is said now

that has not been said before.
Terence - Eunuchus. The Prologue. 41.

I have everything, yet have nothing;

and although I possess nothing, still
of nothing am I in want.
Terence - Eunuchus. Act ii. Sc. 2, 12. (243.)
I am a man, and nothing that concerns
a man do I deem a matter of
indifference to me.
Terence - Heautontimoroumenos. Act i. Sc. 1, 25. (77.)

Nothing is so difficult but that it

may be found out by seeking.
Terence - Heautontimoroumenos. Act iv. Sc. 2, 8. (675.)

There is nothing so easy but that it

becomes difficult when you do it with
reluctance.
Terence - Heautontimoroumenos. Act iv. Sc. 6, 1. (805.)
 Nothing is stronger
than custom.
Ovid - The Art of Love. ii. 345.

It is better to have a
little than nothing.
Publius Syrus - Maxim 484.

Nothing can be done at once

hastily and prudently.
Publius Syrus - Maxim 557.
 We desire nothing so much as
what we ought not to have.
Publius Syrus - Maxim 559.

Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn
nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk
nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the
prompting of nature only, but weep.
Pliny the Elder - Natural History. Book vii. Sect. 4.

It is a maxim universally agreed upon in agriculture, that

nothing must be done too late; and again, that everything must
be done at its proper season; while there is a third precept
which reminds us that opportunities lost can never be regained.
Pliny the Elder - Natural History. Book xviii. Sect. 44.
 As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of
their maps parts of the world which they do not know
about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that
beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of
wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.
Plutarch - Life of Theseus.

Go on, my friend, and fear nothing;

you carry Cæsar and his
fortunes in your boat.
Plutarch - Life of Cæsar.

Nothing made the horse so fat

as the king’s eye.
Plutarch - Of the Training of Children.
If we are not stupid or insincere when
we say that the good or ill of man
lies within his own will, and that all
beside is nothing to us, why are we
still troubled?
Epictetus - Discourses. Chap. xxv.

In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what

we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw
us aside.
Epictetus - Discourses. Chap. xxvi.
 Two rules we should always have
ready,—that there is nothing good
or evil save in the will; and that
we are not to lead events, but to
follow them.
Epictetus - In what Manner we ought to bear Sickness. Book iii. Chap. x.

There is nothing to write about, you say. Well, then,

write and let me know just this,—that there is nothing
to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you
are well. That ’s right. I am quite well.
Pliny the Younger - Letters. Book i. Letter xi. 1.
 That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.
Pliny the Younger - Letters. Book viii. Letter ix. 3.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the

ability to investigate systematically and truly all
that comes under thy observation in life.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations. iii. 11.

By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else

than a mind well ordered.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations. iv. 3.

Nothing can come out of nothing,

any more than a thing can go back
to nothing.Marcus Aurelius - Meditations. iv. 4.
 All that is harmony for thee, O Universe, is in
harmony with me as well. Nothing that comes at the
right time for thee is too early or too late for
me. Everything is fruit to me that thy seasons
bring, O Nature. All things come of thee, have
their being i
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations. iv. 23.

Observe always that everything is the result

of a change, and get used to thinking that
there is nothing Nature loves so well as to
change existing forms and to make new ones
like them.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations. iv. 36.
Nothing happens to anybody which he is not
fitted by nature to bear.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations. v. 18.

As some say, Solon was the author of the

apophthegm, “Nothing in excess.”
Diogenes Laërtius - Solon. xvi.

He used to say that it was better to

have one friend of great value than
many friends who were good for nothing.
Diogenes Laërtius - Anarcharsis. v.
 He declared that he knew nothing,
except the fact of his ignorance.
Diogenes Laërtius - Socrates. xvi.

Nothing can be produced out of nothing.

Diogenes Laërtius - Diogenes of Apollonia. ii.

Democritus says, “But we know nothing

really; for truth lies deep down.”
Diogenes Laërtius - Pyrrho. viii.

He left a paper sealed up, wherein were found

three articles as his last will: “I owe much;
I have nothing; I give the rest to the poor.”
François Rabelais - Motteux’s Life.
 Nothing is so dear and precious as time.
François Rabelais - Works. Book v. Chap. v.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne - Book i. Chap. xxxi. Of Divine Ordinances.

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers,

and have brought nothing of my own but the thread
that ties them together.
Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne - Book iii. Chap. xii. Of Physiognomy.

There is more ado to interpret interpretations

than to interpret the things, and more books upon
books than upon all other subjects; we do nothing
but comment upon one another.
Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne - Book iii. Chap. xiii. Of Experience.
They can expect nothing but their labour for their pains.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra -

Man is his own star; and the soul that can

Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Upon an “Honest Man’s Fortune.”
John Fletcher Don Quixote. The Author’s Preface.

Thank you for nothing.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Don Quixote. Part i. Book. iii. Chap. viii.
 Nothing is given so
profusely as advice.
François, duc de La Rochefoucauld- Maxim 110.

I know nothing about it;

I am my own ancestor.
Andoche Junot

Merchant and pirate were for a long period one

and the same person. Even today mercantile
morality is really nothing but a refinement of
piratical morality.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Maxims.
 All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful
death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come
when science will turn upon its error and no longer
hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it
will dare and act with
Our Eternity.
Maurice Maeterlinck

Nothing is changed in France;

there is only one Frenchman more.
Anon.

Talk of nothing but business, and despatch

that business quickly.
Anon.
 There is nothing new except what is forgotten.
Anon.

They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Anon.

Nothing is secret which shall not be made manifest.

New Testament - Luke viii. 17.

Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be

lost.
New Testament - John vi. 12

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But

there is something that still has a meaning.
Second Letter to a German Friend, December 1943.
 I wasn't unaware of the fact that it doesn't matter
very much whether you die at thirty or at seventy
since, in either case, other men and women will
naturally go on living, for thousands of years even.
Nothing was plainer, in fact. It was still only me who
was dying, whether it was now or in twenty years’
time. At that point the thing that would rather upset
my reasoning was that I’d feel my heart give this
terrifying leap at the thought of having another
twenty years to live.
Albert Camus, the stranger

Nothing, nothing mattered and I knew very well why. He

too knew why. From the depths of my future, throughout
the whole of this absurd life I’d been leading, I’d felt
a vague breath drifting towards me across all the years
that were still to come, and on its way this breath had
evened out everything that was then being proposed to me
in the equally unreal years I was living through.
Albert Camus, the stranger
A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover,
through the detours of art, those two or three great and
simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Albert Camus

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion

which spares nothing.
Albert Camus

After all, every murderer when he kills runs the

risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those
who kill him risk nothing except promotion.
Albert Camus

By definition, a government has no conscience.

Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
Albert Camus
 Freedom is nothing but a
chance to be better.
Albert Camus

How can sincerity be a condition of

friendship? A taste for truth at any
cost is a passion which spares nothing.
Albert Camus

Nothing is more despicable than respect

based on fear.
Albert Camus
If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us
make an injustice of it; let us fight
against destiny, even though
without hope of victory.
Miguel de Unamuno

Nothingness not being nothing,

nothingness being emptiness.
Isabelle Adjani

If you give people nothingness, they

can ponder what can be achieved
from that nothingness.
Tadao Ando
 The world is chaos.
Nothingness is the
yet-to-be-born
god of the world.
Georg Buchner

Man is his own star; and the soul that can

Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Upon an “Honest Man’s Fortune.”
John Fletcher
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those
hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness.
Here and now is what we must contend with.
Angela Carter

Nothing is more dreadful in life than the profound

thought that death may only
greet you with eternal nothingness.
Kim Elizabeth

I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing.

It seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he
became less and less, until he was... nothingness.
Frances Farmer
 People have their own deaths as well as their own
lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we
shall differ in our nothingness.
E. M. Forster

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the

servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and
possessions pale into nothingness before service which
is rendered in a spirit of joy.
Mohandas Gandhi

God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge

my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had
been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and
therefore I could see God in everything.
Bede Griffiths
 When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me.
This action makes me remember my strength which I forget
at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my
captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the
contradiction between my mind and nothingness.
Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont

Although created out of nothing, that is, through

and out of God, he cannot of his own power resolve
himself back into this nothingness.
Max Muller

One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but

because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness,
our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.
Cesare Pavese
Religion enables us to ignore nothingness
and get on with the jobs of life.
John Updike

God made everything out of nothing,

but the nothingness shows through.
Paul Valery

The monuments of the nations are all protests against

nothingness after death;
so are statues and inscriptions;
so is history.
Lew Wallace

The feelings of my smallness and my nothingness always

kept me good company.
Pope John XXIII
And now he turned his head because something had happened far
to the right of him that immediately and completely banished
his aloneness. What had happened was that nothing had
happened, but far to the right, toward the bow of the ship, a
woman’s white skirt had been fluttered by the breeze, and the
white movement had caught his eye.
John O’Hara - Our Friend the Sea

Nothing really matters. Anyone can see. Nothing

really matters. To me.
Freddie Mercury - ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

Non, rien de rien.

Edith Piaf - Non, je ne regrette rien
 Thus Something and Nothing produce each other;
The difficult and the easy complement each other;
The long and the short off-set each other;
The high and the low incline towards each other;
Note and sound harmonize with each other;
Before and after follow each other.
Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching (Book I)

What cannot be seen is called evanescent;

What cannot be heard is called rarefied;
What cannot be touched is called minute.
These three cannot be fathomed
And so they are confused and looked upon as one.
Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching (Book I)
 There are in Zen no sacred books or dogmatic tenets,
nor are there any symbolic formulae through which an
access might be gained into the signification of Zen.
If I am asked, then, what Zen teaches, I would answer,
Zen teaches nothing. Whatever teachings there are in
Zen, they come out of one's own mind. We teach
ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki - An Introduction to Zen Buddhism

The artist is nothing without the gift,

but the gift is nothing without work.
Emile Zola

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than

sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr. - Strength to Love
 I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Oscar Wilde - upon arriving at U.S. customs 1882

Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughing with a sigh?--a note infallible
Of breaking honesty--horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.
Shakespeare - The Winter's Tale (Leontes 1.2.334-46)
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to
add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint Exupery - L'Avion

The Being by which Nothingness arrives in the world must

nihilate Nothingness in its Being, and even so it still
runs the risk of establishing Nothingness as a
transcendent in the very heart of immanence unless it
nihilates Nothingness in its being ‘in connection with
its own being.’ The Being by which Nothingness arrives in
the world is a being such that in its Being, the
Nothingness of its Being is in question. ‘The being by
which Nothingness comes to the world must be its own
Nothingness’
Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness
Statues suffer the darkness of coffins with their eyes,
but they suffer even more from water that never reaches
the sea…
that never reaches the sea.
Federico Garcia Lorca - Little girl Drowned In well - Poet in New York

But ruin fed upon you, you whittled yourself to nothing

for the sake of fleeting, aimless dreams.
Federico Garcia Lorca - Your Childhood in Menton - Poet in New York

Stanton, go to the woods with your jew’s-harp,

go to learn celestial words
that sleep in tree trunks, clouds, and turtles,
in sleeping dogs, in lead and wind,
in irises that don’t sleep and water that copies nothing.
Federico Garcia Lorca - Little Stanton - Poet in New York
 If you want to see that nothing is left,
my inpenetrable love, now that you have gone,
don’t give me your emptied space. No.
Mine is already travelling through the air!
Who will pity you, or me, or the breeze?
If you want to see that nothing is left.
Federico Garcia Lorca - Nocturne of Emptied Space - Poet in New York

Sleep on, nothing remains.

Federico Garcia Lorca - Ode to Walt Whitman - Poet in New York

As for me, I can explain nothing, but stammer with

the fire that burns inside me and the life that has
been bestowed on me.
Federico Garcia Lorca - lecture given in Columbia 1929

American customs are nothing like Spanish ones.

Federico Garcia Lorca - from a letter to his family 1929
Nothing really helps when you face your own problems
Agony Aunt Anna Raeburn, on her marriage break-up in 1974

I know nothing about nothing.

Anna Nicole Smith

Nothing could be more anti-biblical than

letting women vote
Harpers magazine, November 1853

They're innocent, they were doing nothing, and they were

summarily plucked out of water.
George W. Bush, on British sailors who were detained by Iran while on patrol in the Persian Gulf, Camp David, March
31, 2007