Stared Into The Abyss Quotes

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When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.
Fernando Pessoa
If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.
Cory Doctorow (Little Brother (Little Brother, #1))
What the hell is going on?" demanded Kami's dad, advancing with his black eyes snapping. Jared blurted, "My intentions are honourable." Kami sat up straight in her bed and stared in Jared's direction. "Are you completely crazy?" she wanted to know. "This isn't the eighteenth century. How do you think that's going to help?" "Well, I mean," Jared said, back against the wall like a cornered animal. "When we're older. I mean-" "Please shut up," Kami begged. "I agree with Kami," said Dad. "When you're in an abyss-like hole, quit digging.
Sarah Rees Brennan (Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy, #1))
Mind led body to the edge of the precipice. They stared in desire at the naked abyss. If you love me, said mind, take that step into silence. If you love me, said body, turn and exist.
Anne Stevenson
There was such fear in the world. But love was everywhere if you looked. It was the best thing about humans. That they could stare into the abyss and still open up their hearts. A spit in the eye to fear.
Libba Bray (Before the Devil Breaks You (The Diviners, #3))
The abyss doesn't stare back. It winks.
Kresley Cole (Lothaire (Immortals After Dark, #11))
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 (The Young Elites, #2))
And when you see those good things--and I promise you, there are so many good things--they're going to be so much brighter for you than they are for other people, just like the abyss always seems deeper and bigger when you stare at it. If you stick it out, it's all going to feel worth it in the end. Every moment you live, every darkness you face, they'll all feel worth it when you're staring light in the face.
Emily Henry (The Love That Split the World)
The person who fights monsters should make sure that in the process, he does not become a monster himself. Because when you stare down at an abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
We never know self-realization. We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.
Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)
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...
John Geddes (A Familiar Rain)
Madness is the WHO staring into the abyss and denying it is there. Madness is an ostrich who sticks her head in the sand while a pack of hyenas closes around her. - Lanky Man with green eyes
Dan Brown (Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4))
Soon I will fall asleep and I will wake from this terrible dream. The endless night will fall, and I will rise. I long for that night. I do not fear it. I have had my fill of fear. I have stared too long into the abyss, and now the abyss stares back at me.
Rick Yancey (The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist, #2))
For me, faith involves staring into the abyss, seeing that it is dark and full of the unknown—and being okay with that.
Nina Riggs (The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying)
When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.
Riley Sager (Home Before Dark)
Don’t look down,’ Perabo warned them when they almost reached the top and the view from the archways became imposing. Froi sensed Perabo was instructing himself more than the others. ‘You obviously haven’t been imprisoned on the roof of a castle in the Citavita, Perabo,’ Lirah said. ‘Or hung upside down over a balconette staring down into the gravina, waiting to die,’ Gargarin added. ‘Nothing worse than being chained to the balconette with your head facing down over that abyss,’ Arjuro joined in, not one to be outdone in the misery stakes. ‘Try balancing on a piece of granite between the godshouse and the palace with nothing beneath you but air,’ Froi said. Perabo stopped and took a deep breath and looked as if he was going to be sick. ‘Don’t look down, Perabo,’ Froi advised.
Melina Marchetta (Quintana of Charyn (Lumatere Chronicles, #3))
America, like a few other nations, has become characteristic for the depth of the abyss that divide a handful of brutal millionaires who are stagnating in a mire of luxury, and millions of laboring starving men and women who are always staring want in the face.
Vladimir Lenin (A Letter to American Workingmen)
We have stared into the abyss and lived to tell the tale,” Ziel said. “I’m going to sleep.
Will Wight (Reaper (Cradle, #10))
I don’t know what to do today, help me decide. Should I cut myself open and pour my heart on these pages? Or should I sit here and do nothing, nobody’s asking anything of me after all? Should I jump off the cliff that has my heart beating so and develop my wings on the way down? Or should I step back from the edge, and let the others deal with this thing called courage? Should I stare back at the existential abyss that haunts me so and try desperately to grab from it a sense of self? Or should I keep walking half-asleep, only half-looking at it every now and then in times in which I can’t help doing anything but? Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?
Albert Camus
When historians in the future ask a really old version of me about this pandemic, I’m gonna tell them that Trump’s MAGA minions were the only ones who had no idea what was happening, while the rest of America stared into the abyss.
Oliver Markus Malloy (American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America)
She felt the words dangling there, felt herself dangling there, off the edge of the cliff. She swallowed. But Rowan had caught her each time she had fallen- first, when she had plummeted into that abyss of despair and grief; second, when that castle had shattered and she had plunged to the earth. And now this time, this third time...She was not afraid. Aelin met Rowan's stare and said clearly and baldly and without a speckle of doubt, I love you. I am in love with you, Rowan.
Sarah J. Maas (Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5))
A man might think he can stare into the abyss without falling in but sometimes the abyss stares back. Sometimes the abyss exerts a strange effect on your sense of balance.
Philip Kerr (The Lady from Zagreb (Bernard Gunther, #10))
who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares also into you.
Ramez Naam (Nexus (Nexus, #1))
Soon she is lost in another dimension where images prevail and silence rules.  A large, black eye flutters open, staring at Kate from deep within the oceanic darkness of its mysterious pupil.  Falling into the center of this cyclopean abyss, she comes face to face with something completely unexpected.  A tiny infant, seemingly asleep, is suspended in a cocoon of rotating beads of white light above a luminous white stone altar.
Kathy Martone (Victorian Songlight: The Birthings of Magic & Mystery)
Perhaps the rest of the world was gone. It was the most plausible answer. Heaven knows she couldn’t see or think of anyone else. That must be the answer, they were the only two people left, as the Earth spun into a timeless abyss. Claire once read time doesn’t pass at normal speeds within a black hole. If one were to travel into a black hole for only moments and return again, centuries would have passed. That explained the sensation she felt, once again peering into his dark gaze. She wouldn’t look away; she’d trained herself better than that. Then again, she reasoned, it wasn’t an option. She couldn’t divert her gaze if she wanted. The hold upon her stare was stronger than any ropes or chains made by man. Claire knew from experience, submitting to the hold was her best chance at survival. Fighting was a futile waste of energy.
Aleatha Romig (Truth (Consequences, #2))
That night I was alone in my room with the lights off. The radio was on and I was staring at the ceiling. I couldn't sleep much at night anymore because that was when the hollow, empty feeling was the worst. At night there's nothing to hold your mind to the earth, and you spend the entire time falling into an abyss. The only cure is the rising of the sun.
Damien Echols (Life After Death)
Man looks in the abyss, there’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.
Oliver Stone (Wall Street (Screenplay))
Everybody loves Elmo, right? Elmo is a closer. Elmo gets all the Glengarry leads. Elmo stares into the abyss and the abyss whispers, “Tickle me.
R. Eric Thomas (Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays)
Nietzsche once said, Beware when fighting monsters, you do not become a monster yourself. For when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you.
Tal Bauer (Whisper)
I tell you, you Heaven's Holy Baal, you don't exist; but that, if you did, I would curse you so that your Heaven would quiver with the fire of hell! I tell you, I have offered you my service, and you repulsed me; and I turn my back on you for all eternity, because you did not know your time of visitation! I tell you that I am about to die, and yet I mock you! You Heaven God and Apis! with death staring me in the face - I tell you, I would rather be a bondsman in hell than a freedman in your mansions! I tell you, I am filled with a blissful contempt for your divine paltriness; and I choose the abyss of destruction for a perpetual resort, where the devils Judas and Pharaoh are cast down!
Knut Hamsun (Hunger)
I wish the Fallen would just come to us for a change.” Ironically, Fallen Angels dropped from the sky and surrounded us. “I wish I had a chocolate cake!” I exclaimed, staring up. No cake appeared, though I did get a few wry glances. Andrew’s body shook with silent laughter while Lucia gave me raised eyebrows. “What? It worked for the Fallen Angels.
Laura Kreitzer (Abyss (Timeless, #3))
Emotional labor is what you get paid to do, and one of the most difficult types of emotional labor is staring into the abyss of choice and picking a path. Your
Seth Godin (Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?)
Yes, it would have been good, he thought, to spend quiet years with his family, waiting for his diseased heart to fail as he sat in his chair staring at the mountains. But this was better. This was life! Not the killing and the terrified screams of dying men suddenly facing the awesome spectre of their own mortality. No, but to face his fears as a man, to stand at the brink of the abyss and refuse to be cowed or beaten down.
David Gemmell (Sword in the Storm (The Rigante, #1))
The stars stare back In that deep, Soul-shattering blackness And from the depths of existence Comes a cruel, icy wind Raising the hairs On the back of your neck And suddenly it feels Like you’re walking a tightrope Over that endless abyss On one sad, fraying, thin Violin string.
Justin Wetch (Bending The Universe)
Billie lies awake for a long time, watching the passing lights of cars on the highway and thinking about a strange phenomenon the French call l’appel du vide, the call of the void. It’s when you stand up high, staring into an abyss, and have a strong desire to throw yourself into it. It can take other forms. You might be driving and suddenly think about jerking the wheel, sending your car into oncoming traffic. Or you might be out for a hike and fantasize about hurling yourself off a cliff. It is not a suicidal impulse. In fact, it is the opposite. Psychologists say it’s actually about how much a person wants to live. They perceive a nearby threat to themselves and they think about that threat because they want so much to survive.
Deanna Raybourn (Killers of a Certain Age (Killers of a Certain Age, #1))
retreat, with nothing to look forward to, nowhere to be, nothing to do, we are forced to confront the “wound of existence” head-on, to stare into the abyss and realize that so much of what we do in life—every shift in our seat, every bite of food, every pleasant daydream—is designed to avoid pain or seek pleasure. But if we can drop all that, we can, as Sam once said in his speech to the angry, befuddled atheists, learn how to be happy “before anything happens.” This happiness is self-generated, not contingent on exogenous forces; it’s the opposite of “suffering.” What the Buddha recognized was a genuine game changer.
Dan Harris (10% Happier)
When he’s staring into a screen, he’s staring into the abyss. That void of his own making. Of course the abyss would stare back at you.
A.D. Aliwat (In Limbo)
Don't Stare Into Your i-Phone Too Long Lest The Abyss Stares Back at You
Dean Cavanagh
A heavy thunder shattered the deep sleep in my head, so that I came to myself, like someone woken by force, and standing up, I moved my eyes, now refreshed, and looked round, steadily, to find out what place I was in. I found myself, in truth, on the brink of the valley of the sad abyss that gathers the thunder of an infinite howling. It was so dark, and deep, and clouded, that I could see nothing by staring into its depths.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
Jaenelle looked thoughtful. “He seduced me. Well, seduced Witch. When we were in the abyss.” “He what?” Lucivar asked with deadly calm. “Don’t get snarly,” Jaenelle snapped. “It was a trick to make me heal the body. He didn’t really want me. Her. He didn’t…” Her voice trailed away. She waited a minute before continuing. “He said he’d been waiting for Witch all his life. That he’d been born to be her lover. But then he didn’t want to be her lover.” “Hell’s fire, Cat,” Lucivar exploded. “You were a twelve-year-old who had recently been raped. What did you expect him to do?” “I wasn’t twelve in the abyss.” Lucivar narrowed his eyes, wondering what she meant by that. “He lied to me,” she said in a small voice. “No, he didn’t. He meant exactly what he said. If you had been eighteen and had offered him the Consort’s ring, you would have found that out quick enough.” Lucivar stared at the blurry garden. He cleared his throat. “Saetan loves you, Cat. And you love him. He did what he had to do to save his Queen. He did what any Warlord Prince would do. If you can’t forgive him, how will you ever be able to forgive me?” “Oh, Lucivar.” Sobbing, Jaenelle threw her arms around him.
Anne Bishop (Heir to the Shadows (The Black Jewels, #2))
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 (Timeless, #3))
What was that?” I croaked. Akhol sidestepped into my view and towered over us. “It was a Demon.” “But you said—” “I know what I said,” Akhol cut in sharply, rubbing his eyes. “There was something wrong with it. Like the Demon had adapted to the darkness and water.” I shivered. “Did he have a ring that he called ‘my precious’?” I joked to try and lighten the mood. I didn’t get a good look at the Demon, but my mind had no problems picturing Gollum. They stared at me blankly.
Laura Kreitzer (Abyss (Timeless, #3))
I was sitting on my mom's couch that summer, staring into the so-called abyss, seeing the endless and incomprehensible nothingness where Josh's friendship used to be, when I came to the startling realization that if there really is no reason to do anything, then there is also no reason to not do anything; that in the face of the inevitability of death,there is no reason to ever give in to one's fear or embarrassment or shame, since it's all just a bunch of nothing anyway; and that by spending the majority of my short life avoiding what was painful and uncomfortable, I had essentially been avoiding being alive at all.
Mark Manson
The truth is, the abyss lives in us. In our greed. In the way we look at things different to us, and see things lesser. In the way we see the smaller, or the weaker, and think them prey. It begins with the beasts of the land, the birds of the sky. And in a blinking, we find ourselves seeing our lessers in people with different colored skins. Different gods. Different creeds. We see them as lessers, and we hurt, and we kill, and we think nothing of it. Because they are different, we think ourselves just. Because we are stronger, we think ourselves righteous. That is the abyss in all of us. And we stand close to the edge still. Closer than any can dream. We need but stray for a moment and we will find ourselves back again, staring down into that black. And who will save us? When everything that was different to us is already gone?
Jay Kristoff (Endsinger (The Lotus Wars, #3))
You don't know everything," he says softly. "Not yet you don't. And when you see those good things - and I promise you, there are so many good things - they're going to be so much brighter for you than they are for other people, just like the abyss see,s deeper and bigger when you stare at it. If you stick it out, it's all going to feel worth it in the end. Every moment you live, every darkness you face, they'll all feel worth it when you're staring light in the face. Okay?
Emily Henry (The Love That Split the World)
It is sometimes argued that disbelief in a fearful and tempting heavenly despotism makes life into something arid and tedious and cynical: a mere existence without any consolation or any awareness of the numinous or the transcendent. What nonsense this is. In the first place, it commits an obvious error. It seems to say that we ought not to believe that we are an evolved animal species with faulty components and a short lifespan for ourselves and our globe, lest the consequences of the belief be unwelcome or discreditable to us. Could anything show more clearly the bad effects of wish-thinking? There can be no serious ethical position based on denial or a refusal to look the facts squarely in the face. But this does not mean that we must stare into the abyss all the time. (Only religion, oddly enough, has ever required that we obsessively do that.)
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
Do other dads not end their phone calls with existential despair? Because that's what my dad does. Papa ends most of his calls with me the way you might close a conversation with someone you want to menace. "Anyway," he'll say, "I'll be here. Staring into the abyss." Or, when I have given him good news, "The talented will rule and the rest will perish in the sea of mediocrity." Or, when I have given him bad news, "I am for for everything that happens to you, as everything is my fault." He never ends with anything that couldn't one day be construed as a tragic yet comic last word.
Scaachi Koul
Under a Certain Little Star" My apologies to chance for calling it necessity. My apologies to necessity in case I’m mistaken. May happiness not be angry if I take it for my own. May the dead forgive me that their memory’s but a flicker. My apologies to time for the multiplicity of the world overlooked each second. My apologies to an old love for treating the new one as the first. Forgive me far-off wars for taking my flowers home. Forgive me open wounds for pricking my finger. My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss. My apologies to those in railway stations for sleeping comfortably at five in the morning. Pardon me hounded hope for laughing sometimes. Pardon me deserts for not rushing in with a spoonful of water. And you O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage, forever still and staring at the same spot, absolve me even if you happened to be stuffed. My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs. My apologies to large questions for small answers. Truth, do not pay me too much attention. Solemnity, be magnanimous to me. Endure, O mystery of being that I might pull threads from your veil. Soul, don’t blame me that I’ve got you so seldom. My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere. My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman. I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me, because I myself am my own obstacle. Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and then labor to make them light.
Wisława Szymborska (Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska)
The truth is, the vanity of protective parents that I cited to the court goes beyond look-at-us-we’re-such-responsible-guardians. Our prohibitions also bulwark our self-importance. They fortify the construct that we adults are all initiates. By conceit, we have earned access to an unwritten Talmud whose soul-shattering content we are sworn to conceal from “innocents” for their own good. By pandering to this myth of the naïf, we service our own legend. Presumably we have looked the horror in the face, like staring into the naked eye of the sun, blistering into turbulent, corrupted creatures, enigmas even to ourselves. Gross with revelation, we would turn back the clock if we could, but there is no unknowing of this awful canon, no return to the blissfully insipid world of childhood, no choice but to shoulder this weighty black sagacity, whose finest purpose is to shelter our air-headed midgets from a glimpse of the abyss. The sacrifice is flatteringly tragic. The last thing we want to admit is that the forbidden fruit on which we have been gnawing since reaching the magic age of twenty-one is the same mealy Golden Delicious that we stuff into our children’s lunch boxes. The last thing we want to admit is that the bickering of the playground perfectly presages the machinations of the boardroom, that our social hierarchies are merely an extension of who got picked first for the kickball team, and that grown-ups still get divided into bullies and fatties and crybabies. What’s a kid to find out? Presumably we lord over them an exclusive deed to sex, but this pretense flies so fantastically in the face of fact that it must result from some conspiratorial group amnesia. To this day, some of my most intense sexual memories date back to before I was ten, as I have confided to you under the sheets in better days. No, they have sex, too. In truth, we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty much all we do is eat and shit and rut. The secret is there is no secret. That is what we really wish to keep from our kids, and its suppression is the true collusion of adulthood, the pact we make, the Talmud we protect.
Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)