#insignificance

For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance. ↗

— Joseph Brodsky

#insignificance #language #lesson #life #most

For many feverish years he was burdened with the sensation, an ancient one to be sure, that the incredible sprawl of human history was no more than a pathetically partial record of an infinitely vast and shadowed chronicle of universal metamorphoses. How much greater, then, was the feeling that his own pathetic history formed a practically invisible fragment of what itself was merely an obscure splinter of the infinite. Somehow he needed to excarcerate himself from the claustral dungeon cell of his life. In the end, however, he broke beneath the weight of his aspiration. And as the years passed, the only mystery which seemed worthy of his interest, and his amazement, was that unknown day which would inaugurate his personal eternity, that incredible day on which the sun simply would not rise, and forever would begin. ↗

— Thomas Ligotti

#limitation #vastness #life

struck by the pain of the ice and the rage of the water below that was forced to make room for the huge piece of frozen time, the glacier, trapped in a solid state for centuries, melting into the ocean and becoming one with its future. She feels small and insignificant in the face of such a display of nature. ↗

— Garth Stein

#nature-s-grandeur #time #nature

There is, I believe, no person, however insignificant in the world, but, if an account of his life and adventures were committed to paper, would be entertaining in some degree: the follies of our own life, and those we are liable to be drawn into by others, will constantly afford matter for serious reflection. ↗

— Henry Spencer Ashbee

#life #reflection #life

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance. ↗

— T. S. Eliot

#character #diminished #importance #insignificance #knowledge

Anyone who thinks they're important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential. ↗

— William Thomas

#deal #fact #her #his #important

Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety. ↗

— Aesop

#insignificance #often #our #safety

My life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. It means nothing. ↗

— David Hewson

#life #meaninglessness #life

It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#insignificance #unpopularity #vanity #vanity