Abyss Quotes

“Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living.”
― Alysha Speer

“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.”
― Thomas Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1

“When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Фридрих Ницше

“I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

“If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“Because I'm a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Deal with all this, live with myself, you mean? I honestly don't know. I stand often enough at the abyss of my soul, asking that same question, looking down into the dark crevices where the black monsters dwell on the bottom. They gaze up at me, and I look them in the eyes. “This also you are,” they say, and I almost fall into the void.”
“And then?”
Anaxantis shrugged.
“And then? I turn around and go do what needs to be done. What else is there?”
― Andrew Ashling, The Invisible Chains - Part 1: Bonds of Hate

“for we all have
our own

twilights
and mists
and abysses

to return to.”
― Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos

“While we are looking for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, that is, the 'new', which can only be found by plunging deep into the Unknown, we have to go on exploring sex, books, and travel, although we know that they lead us to the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place where the antidote can be found.”
― Roberto Bolano(Literature+Illness=Illness)

“The abyss doesn't stare back. It winks.”
― Kresley Cole, Lothaire

“I looked into those eyes and I saw nothing. It was like staring straight into the Underworld. Like he aches to return to where he came from.”
― Marie Lu, The Rose Society

“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!”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“In the recumbence of depression, your information-gathering system collates its intelligence and reports to you these facts: (1) there is nothing to do; (2) there is nowhere to go; (3) there is nothing to be; (4) there is no one to know. Without meaning-charged emotions keeping your brain on the straight and narrow, you would lose your balance and fall into an abyss of lucidity. And for a conscious being, lucidity is a cocktail without ingredients, a crystal clear concoction that will leave you hung over with reality. In perfect knowledge there is only perfect nothingness, which is perfectly painful if what you want is meaning in your life.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“I open my eyes.
I want to know:
what is in the abyss of a kiss?
Are stars born in these black caves
that house bated breaths and unspoken words?
Do our souls crawl on these tender cheeks
to greet one another by ivory gates?
What happens when we kiss?
Where do you go?
Don’t tell me.
For I have lost my desire to know.
Kiss me
so that I forget myself.
I close my eyes
and fall in the abyss.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Sometimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm's edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss.”
― Edvard Munch

“[death]...the abyss from where no traveler is permitted to return”
― George Washington

“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.”
― Joe Bousquet

“And as for the vague something --- was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? --- that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare --- to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“[…] as if the next thing must quickly come along to occupy her, or the abyss might open. What abyss? The abyss that waits for all of us, when all our actions seem futile, when the ability to fill the day seems stalled, and the waiting takes on an edge of dread. ”
― Anita Brookner, Latecomers

“Not a bad thing to know something about darkness. You can’t talk about light without some knowledge of darkness. Like your buddy Nietzsche said, 'He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.' Keep that in mind.”
― Kazuki Kaneshiro, Go

“To have reservations is to show true leadership. To have certainty without question, to lead people to battle with no qualms, or to prosecute without hesitation are qualities of a tyrant.”
― Laura Kreitzer, Abyss

“It was as if some magnetic repulsion, which before had kept our two carriages from meeting and passing, had now been reversed, and so sucked me inexorably forward, drawing me towards something my heart made clear I feared - or should fear - utterly, in the way some people are fatally attracted towards an abyss while standing on its very edge.”
― Iain Banks, The Bridge

“A growing heat, like a million blazing suns all focused on me, lit my insides. It felt like I was being cooked in the Gabriella Roast Cooker, me spinning around-and-around to heat my flesh evenly. For some reason I was having trouble comprehending the sudden change in my revolving world as I swelled with a horrible, billowing fire.”
― Laura Kreitzer, Abyss

“There was an image in my mind—an expectation of what it would be like when I finally gave myself fully to a man. It wasn’t like this. It was always at night with candles flickering lazily, music filling the air with a sexy melody, and maybe a bubble bath. But no. It was infinitely better, and there was no froo froo, stereotypical scene that played out.
It was incredible.
Brilliant.
Amazing.
Indescribable, really. Like all the planets in the galaxy aligned for a perfect moment in time. As if this was the beginning of time. From now until the rest of eternity, everything finally had meaning.”
― Laura Kreitzer, Abyss

“When a man is standing at the top of a cliff, it isn’t fear of falling that keeps him rooted to the edge — it’s the fear of not being able to resist the desire to jump, just to see what falling feels like.”
― Cristelle Comby, Russian Dolls

“His eyes undress his ancient unrevealable emotions.
…

A suffocating pain is hidden in his eyes.
His heart is locked in the depth of the eternal abyss.
…

His smile ripped my soul and hypnotized my brain,
…

Seduced in an indescribable agony of dreams.
…

I had dreams haphazardly about a phantasmagorical creature,
unbelievably beautiful,
…

I felt his touch disintegrating my entire body,
it was the apogee of an unborn world
and the fallen of the existing one,

(fragment from Bewitched, chapter Passion)”
― Claudia Pavel, The odyssey of my lost thoughts

“We both must burn this midnight oil together. You’re just as new to me as I am you.” --Andrew”
― Laura Kreitzer, Abyss

“The woman turns away; one wing blackens like an onyx gem while the other glows white like a bright spotlight. She flies into the sky, leaving the crowd staring in astonishment. Angels fly away in two directions. Half make a black storm of moving, twisting shapes. The other half forms a white-as-snow moving cloud. The ranks are divided.”
― Laura Kreitzer, Abyss

“It was easy to gain strength from chaos because it had about it the abyss--always so tantalizing--as the heroin addicts knew. But the journey to the abyss was short-lived. The harder road was to draw strength and not power. To gain footing not in the wild uncertainty of immortality but the abiding knowledge of mortality.”
― Heather Rose, The Museum of Modern Love