The Abyss Quotes

Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

I could not help feeling that they were evil things -- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss.

In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!

The abyss you stare into and that stares back at you is your reflection in the mirror - we all have it - that shadow self - that dark heart.

Into this wild abyss, The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave.

O Conscience, into what abyss of fears And horrors hast thou driven me, out of which I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged.

The Way is empty, yet inexhaustible, like an abyss!

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work.

The vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.

He unwittingly takes a false step and plunges into the abyss.

[Should Britain fail, then the entire world would] sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister ... by the lights of perverted science.

I gazed upon the earth and saw that a body, in its tender faithlessness, had located it in the sky. A splendid scarf of blood, looming above the abyss.

That little word 'we' I mistrust and here's why: No man of another can say, 'He is I.' Behind all agreement lies something amiss All seeming accord cloaks a lurking abyss.

Everything, alas, is an abyss, — actions, desires, dreams, words!

All world was one, one windy nothing, My world was christened in a stream of milk.

I urge you to spend your youth profitably in study and virtue.... In brief, let me see in you an abyss of knowledge.

The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider. He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads.

We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.

Before me is the abyss. How can I leap across it? And if I do not leap, how shall I ever be able to reach God?

Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.

We build our character as a carapace to keep away the fear of the abyss. That's what our character is for.

When you stare into an abyss for a long time, the abyss also stares into you.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally.

But however close we sometimes seem to that dark and final abyss, let no man of peace and freedom despair. For he does not stand alone.

We live in such constant nearness to the abyss of past time that the moment is endlessly sucked into.

Hark! o'er the dread abyss the sea-bird screams-- The rocks resound--again the lightning gleams!

It is not difficult to censor foreign news. What is difficult today is to censor one's own thoughts, To sit by and see the blind man On the sightless horse, riding into the bottomless abyss.

The abyss beyond our beliefs is something we have to pass through in order to see the world anew, to see it in terms not dictated so much by our culture, our parents, or our religious convictions.

The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.

I suppose love is never a sure thing, no matter what words are spoken. Love requires a leap of faith into the abyss, every time.

[death]...the abyss from where no traveler is permitted to return

Put a man on the brink of the abyss and - in the unlikely event that she doesn't fall into it - he will become a mystic or a madman... Which is probably the same thing!

If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.

Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.

Every month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.

She felt as if the world were tilting and she was clinging on helplessly, trying to keep from tumbling into a black abyss.

Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams. A wall at the world's end. Behind it I await death. Because all our work has come to this.

The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.

When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings.

It was easy to see how upsetting it would be if women began to love freely where love came to them. An abyss would open in the principal shopping street of every town.

One cannot cross an abyss in two jumps.

I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.

The abyss is full of reality, the abyss experiences itself, the abyss is alive.

... see well how it often befalls that to rise to the topmost degree would make it seem that the abyss is on high.

Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.

The grand canyon which yawns between the writer's concept of what he wants to capture in words and what comes through is a cruel abyss.

God gave the sea the danger and the abyss, but it was in it that He mirrored the sky.