Quotations: I Am Nobody, Nothing, Nowhere
Are you – Nobody – too?...
How dreary – to be – Somebody!...
~Emily Dickinson, 1861
I am no king, have laid no kingdoms waste,
Taken no princes captive, led no triumphs
Of weeping women through long walls of trumpets;
Say rather, I am no one, or an atom;
Say rather, two great gods, in a vault of starlight,
Play ponderingly at chess, and at the game's end
One of the pieces, shaken, falls to the floor
And runs to the darkest corner; and that piece
Forgotten there, left motionless, is I.…
Say that I have no name, no gifts, no power,
Am only one of millions, mostly silent;
One who came with eyes and hands and a heart,
Looked on beauty, and loved it, and then left it.
Say that the fates of time and space obscured me,
Led me a thousand ways to pain, bemused me,
Wrapped me in ugliness; and like great spiders
Dispatched me at their leisure.… Well, what then?
Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust,
The horns of glory blowing above my burial?
~Conrad Aiken, "Tetélestai," 1919, quoted from the 1925 edition
Whate'er my inner stuff, my outside's blank;
I'm nobody — or rather, look the same —
I'm — who I am — and know it...
~Robert Browning
I'm nothing.
I'll always be nothing.
I can't want to be something.
But I have in me all the dreams of the world.
~Álvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa, 1888–1935), "The Tobacco Shop," 1928, translated by Richard Zenith, 1998
I am nothing, my name is Count Nothing... Did I exist before my birth? no; shall I exist after my death? no. What am I? a little dust aggregated by an organism. What have I to do on this earth? I have the choice between suffering and enjoyment. To what will suffering lead me? to nothingness, but I shall have suffered. To what will enjoyment lead me? to nothingness, but I shall have enjoyed. ~Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, translated by Lascelles Wraxall, 1879
I am nothing and nobody; atoms that have learned to look at themselves; dirt that has learned to see the awe and the majesty of the universe. ~Geoffrey A. Landis, "Winter Fire," in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 1997, geoffreylandis.com
When I was last in Concord, you spoke of retiring farther from our civilization. I asked you if you would feel no longings for the society of your friends. Your reply was in substance, "No, I am nothing." That reply was memorable to me. It indicated a depth of resources, a completeness of renunciation, a poise and repose in the universe, which to me is almost inconceivable; which in you seemed domesticated, and to which I look up with veneration. I would know of that soul which can say "I am nothing." I would be roused by its words to a truer and purer life... There is something sublime to me in this attitude, — far as I may be from it myself... Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, "I will simply be." Could I plant myself at once upon the truth, reducing my wants to their minimum… I should at once be brought nearer to nature, nearer to my fellow-men, — and life would be infinitely richer. But, alas! I shiver on the brink. ~Harrison Blake, letter to Henry David Thoreau, 1848
In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight: for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life — no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent
I am nothingness. ~Robert Browning, "Balaustion's Adventure," 1871, translation from Euripides' Alcestis
"I am proud because I am nothing," Casanova used to say. He could not boast of his birth; he never held high position... at every moment of his life he was forced to rely on his own real and personal qualities... He is a consummate master in the dignified narration of undignified experiences. ~Havelock Ellis, 1896
Knowing is such a big word... I know nothing, I've seen nothing, I am nothing! Nobody! ~Rupert Hughes, The Golden Ladder, 1923
I am nothing, but truth is everything. ~Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in J. G. Holland, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1866
I must speak out my heart or I am nothing. ~Horace Field, Glitter and Gold, 1872
But when I say I possess this talent I do not express myself accurately. The truth is that my talent possesses me. It is genius. It drives me to exercise it. I must exercise it. I am great when I exercise it. At other moments I am nobody. ~Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, 1921
My kingdom is not of this world. Either I'm a poet or else I'm nothing. ~Robert Louis Stevenson, Weir of Hermiston: An Unfinished Romance, 1896
I was poet, historian,
And now I am nothing.
~René Boudier (1634–1723), epitaph on himself
Then Buddha dropped on his knees, saying: "O Life! O Light of Life! O Life of my soul, illumine me. I am nothing, shine within me, light a lamp in my soul that I may see myself and know Thy will... He who knows that this body is like froth, and has learned that all things are unsubstantial, he shall break the arrow of death... He who gives up all attachments of a world sort, clinging to nothing, having conquered his faculties, he is full of light and peace and is free from this world..." ~E. P. Powell, "The True Life," Liberty and Life, 1889
Socrates says, if I am waiting for another man to do me good, I am nothing.
INTERLOCUTOR. — My wife and I live as one.
ENDMAN. — My wife and I live as ten; she's one and I'm nothing.
INT. — Oh, I see you are the ought.
END. — Yes, I ought to be something else, but I'm not.
INT. — You are the cipher.
END. — Yes. I sigh-for better days, but they don't seem to come.
~J. Melville Janson, "More Dogs Than Days," Encyclopedia of Comedy, 1895
Thou hast passed
Thy word that such I shall enjoy, and then
My mission is accomplished in this world.
I go unto another, where all souls
Begin again, or take up life from where
Death broke at it. I cannot think there will be
Like disproportion there between our powers
And will, as here; if not, I shall be happy.
I feel no bounds. I cannot think but thought
On thought springs up, illimitably, round,
As a great forest sows itself; but here
There is nor ground nor light enough to live.
Could I, I would be every where at once,
Like the sea, for I feel as if I could
Spread out my spirit o'er the endless world,
And act at all points:—I am bound to one.
I must be here and there and everywhere,
Or I am nowhere.
~Philip James Bailey, Festus, 1845 edition
...and now I am here. No, I am nowhere. ~Rupert Hughes, The Gift-Wife, 1910
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing...
~Allen Ginsberg, "America," 1956
I'm the most unhappy woman on earth. I've lost my children... I was everything. In between something's happened. I don't know what it is. But now I'm nothing. Less than nothing. ~Inez Haynes Irwin, "When They Leave the Nest," 1923
What ought I to do? I see only obscurity everywhere. Shall I believe that I am nothing, shall I believe that I am God? ~Blaise Pascal, translated from the text of M. Auguste Molinier by C. Kegan Paul, 1905
I have toil'd and till'd, and sweaten in the sun
According to the curse: — must I do more?
For what should I be gentle? for a war
With all the elements ere they will yield
The bread we eat? For what must I be grateful?
For being dust, and grovelling in the dust,
Till I return to dust? If I am nothing —
For nothing shall I be an hypocrite,
And seem well-pleased with pain? For what should I
Be contrite?...
~Lord Byron, Cain, 1821
Yet, when the time has come to be nothing, how good it is to be nothing!
a waste expanse of nothing, like wide foreshores where not a ripple is left
and the sea is lost
in the lapse of the lowest of tides...
I know I am nothing.
Life has gone away, below my low-water mark.
~D. H. Lawrence, Pansies, 1929
Good passenger stay not to ask what's my name:
I'm nothing at present, from nothing I came;
I never was much, and am now less than ever:
And idle hath certainly been his endeavour,
Who, coming from nothing, to nothing is fled,
Yet thought he might something become were he dead.
~Mr. Holcroft's epitaph, quoted in A Collection of Epitaphs and Monumental Inscriptions, 1806
I suppose, then, all things that I see to be illusion; I believe that of all which my lying memory reports no one thing ever occured: I undoubtedly have no senses; body, figure, extension, motion, place, are chimeras. What then remains true? Perhaps this one thing, that Nothing is certain.
...Is there not some God, or by whatever name I should call him, who inspires me with these very thoughts? Yet why should I think so, when perhaps I myself may be the originator of them? I, at least, am not I at any rate something? But I have just denied that I have any senses, or any body: yet here I am at a stand, for what then? Am I so bound up in body and senses that without these I cannot be? But I have persuaded myself that there is simply nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies, — how can it be otherwise, then, but that I am not? Aye, but certainly I was when I so persuaded myself. But there is a Deceiver, I know not who, supremely powerful, supremely cunning, who purposely is for ever imposing on me. No doubt then I too am, if he deceives me, and let him deceive his utmost, he never will effect, that I am nothing so long as I think myself to be something. So that, after the whole matter has been turned over enough and to spare, we must at last confidently pronounce this conclusion, "I am, I exist," so often as I declare it or think it, must necessarily be true.
I do not yet, indeed, sufficiently understand what sort of being I am, — the I who now necessarily am — and henceforward I must take care lest it chance that I incautiously assume something else in place of myself, and so go astray even in that piece of knowledge which I maintain to be the most certain and evident of all. ~René Descartes (1596–1650), translated by Richard Lowndes, 1878
I will continue always in this track until I shall find something that is certain, or at least, if I can do nothing more, until I shall know with certainty that there is nothing certain...
Is there not a God, or some being, by whatever name I may designate him, who causes these thoughts to arise in my mind? But why suppose such a being, for it may be I myself am capable of producing them? Am I then, at least not something?... Am I so dependent on the body and the senses that without these I cannot exist? But I had the persuasion that there was absolutely nothing in the world, that there was no sky, no earth, neither minds nor bodies; was I not therefore, at the same time, persuaded that I did not exist? Far from it; I assuredly existed, since I was persuaded. But there is I know not what being, who is possessed at once of the highest power and the deepest cunning, who is constantly employing all his ingenuity in deceiving me. Doubtless, then I exist, since I am deceived; and, let him deceive me as he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I shall be conscious that I am something. ~René Descartes (1596–1650), translated by John Veitch, 1901
"I'm nobody!" should have a hearse;
But then, "I'm somebody!" is worse.
~Mary Mapes Dodge, "Life in Laconics," in A Satire Anthology, collected by Carolyn Wells, 1905
It is well for man to think what he is as regards his body. This body is large as compared with that of the flea, insignificant compared with the earth... It is clear that man with his body is nothing compared with the sun and the stars. And to think that we were not even thought of a hundred, a thousand, many thousands of years ago, but other men like unto us were still born, grew up and died, that of the millions and millions of men such as I nothing remains, neither bones, nor even the dust of bones, and that after me millions and millions of people will live, and that the grass will grow from my bones, and that sheep will feed on the grass, and men will eat the sheep, and nothing will remain of me, not a grain of dust, nor even a memory! Is it not clear that I am nothing?
Nothing, indeed, but this nothing has a conception of itself and of its place in the universe. And if it has such a conception, this conception is far from nothing, it is something that is more important than the entire universe, for without this conception within me and within other creatures like me, that which I call the infinite universe would not exist. ~Leo Tolstoy, The Pathway of Life, translated by Archibald J. Wolfe, 1919
O I am nothing: and to nothing must return again... Behold I am oblivion... ~William Blake (1757–1827), Jerusalem
If with the tongues of men and of messengers I speak, and have not love, I have become brass sounding, or a cymbal tinkling; and if I have prophecy, and know all the secrets, and all the knowledge, and if I have all the faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing; and if I give away to feed others all my goods, and if I give up my body that I may be burned, and have not love, I am profited nothing. The love is long-suffering, it is kind, the love doth not envy, the love doth not vaunt itself, is not puffed up, doth not act unseemly, doth not seek its own things, is not provoked, doth not impute evil, rejoiceth not over the unrighteousness, and rejoiceth with the truth; all things it beareth, all it believeth, all it hopeth, all it endureth... And now there doth remain faith, hope, love — these three; and the greatest of these, love.
Pity my shame, O God: bind up my wounds: lift me from the dust; raise me up from this nothing and make me something; what Thou wilt; what Thou wilt delight in. Take away the partition wall, the hinderance, the sin that so easily besets me; and bring me unto Jesus... unite me unto Him; and then although in myself I am nothing, yet in Him I shall be what I ought to be, and what Thou canst not choose but love. Amen, amen. ~Rev. Jeremy
And it is from out of the depth of our humility that the height of our destiny looks grandest. For let me truly feel that in myself I am nothing, and at once, through every inlet of my soul, God comes in and is every thing in me. ~William Mountford, Euthanasy; or, Happy Talk Towards the End of Life, 1849