Quotes About Insignificance

We are ants on the carcass of the world, spawned out of nothing, going busily nowhere. One of us dies, the others crawl over us to the pickings.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

wake up who cares about little boys that talk too much

Compared to general opinion, personal opinion is simply unnecessary.

Compared to the universe, we are like a drop of water in the ocean. We come and pass unnoticed; just like a chilly wind.

Raphael: "Ä°nsanl???n bizim için hiçbir deÄŸeri yok," dedi. "Kar?ncalardan farklar? yok, kolayca baÅŸlar? ezilebilir, hemen yerine baÅŸkas? konabilir." sy73

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

We're just fragile machines programmed with a false sense of our own importance. And every now and then the universe sends a reminder that we don't really matter to it...

When the dust raised by the great events of modern history settles, the mediocrity of the protagonists leaves the historian dumbfounded.

We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.

And Petersburg was left without Akakii Akakievich, as though he had never lived there. A being disappeared, and was hidden, who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, who never even attracted to himself the attention of an observer of nature, who omits no opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly, and examining it under the microscope...

Even now, when I have time to consider what I've been and what I am, I doubt I comprehend my humanity, if I can claim so grand a word for my own morsel of life. I might as well be a meteor of a man, for all the difference I've made on earth.

For all my wanderings, I'm ordinary. I came to terms long ago with my littleness. A man is what he is--he can't rise so much as an inch above his shortcomings--Horatio Alger be damned!

Para Cioran, toda forma de elevación presupone lo inútil: "Una excepción inútil, un modelo al que nadie haga caso -ese es el rango al que debemos aspirar si queremos enaltecernos a nosotros mismos

Sonunda insanlar? kar?ncalar gibi kalabal?k ve nereye ko???tu?unu bilmeden çarp???p duran önemsiz varl?klara benzetti.

Onu görüyorlard?. Hiçbir ?ey yapmadan, aptalca bir düzen içinde ya?arken kimse görmüyordu. Sonra, al???lm???n d???ndaen küçük bir davran??? görüyorlard?. Nas?l görüyorlard? acaba? Sizi gördük diyorlard?.

Yüzlerce insan, binlerce insan... ço?u ne kadar önemsiz, ne kadar silik. ?çlerinden biri Selim olamaz m?yd?? Milyonlar?n içinde sadece bir Selim. Bu tabiat kanunlar? ne kadar insafs?z, diye dü?ündü. Kime zarar? dokunur bunun? Hepsinin eli, aya??, ba?? var... Selim gibi. Ne olur bu kadar el, ayak, ba? bir araya gelse de sadece bir tanecik Selim ç?karsalar aralar?ndan; ne olur bir tane Selim olsa.

?fadesi güç ?eyler dü?ünüyorum. ?eyler... ?eyler.' Durur, kafas?n? toparlama?a çal???rd?. 'Çok saçma ?eyler, çok önemsiz ?eyler de dü?ünüyorum. Kafam hiç durmadan çal???yor. Önemli, önemsiz: ben s?raya koymaya f?rsat bulamadan büyük bir h?zla geçiyorlar. Geriye yaln?z yorgunluk kal?yor. Okumal?y?m ve bütün bunlar? unutmal?y?m.

There is no dignity in a crying toothpick.

The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.

If one could know whether among that glittering host there were here and there other spirit-inhabited grains of rock and metal, whether man's blundering search for wisdom and for love was a sole and insignificant tremor, or part of a universal movement!

Barren, barren and trivial are these words.

I'm never satisfied. I need stronger and stronger stimulation. But I'm a coward and a lazybones, so for the most part nothing happens beyond my imagining some excitement. I'm a speculator of the metaphysical. An adventurer only in my mind. A navigator within the reading room. In other words, I'm an insignificant dream-weaver.