C. S. Lewis Quotes

Meaninglessness takes hold because meaninglessness is addictive.

There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.

There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.

I don’t know what it means to live.

Behind me there are already so many memories (...) Lots of memories, but no point in remembering them, and ahead of me a long, long road with nothing to aim for ... I just don't want to go along it.

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

She said she was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn't go on. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering, or the total absence of meaning in their lives.

...you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on

Why don’t you try wandering with me to the Palace of Not-Even-Anything

But who are we, where do we come from When all those years Nothing but idle talk is left And we are nowhere in the world?" = MEETING =

Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

There's nothing at the center of what we do...No center. It doesn't exist. All of us-look at our lives: We have an acceptable level of affluence. We have entertainment. We have a relative freedom from fear. But there's nothing else.

Life is like a long ride to nowhere in particular.

This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.

Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom.

I cling to nowhere until I fall - the crash of Nothing.

Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.

I cannot face the idea of life without work. What would one do when ideas failed or words refused to come? It is impossible not to shudder at the thought.

I'm sure that inside your heart... you're trying with all your might to find it on your own... the reason you were born. Because... because really... there might not be anyone who was born with a reason. I think that everyone... everyone might have to find one on their own. [in her head] A reason for being born... A reason that it's okay to be alive... A reason to exist. [aloud] I think everyone might have to find it themselves... and decide it for themselves. It could be your dreams... your job... or a person... The reason you're looking for... might be vague, unclear... and uncertain. [in her head] And you might lose it. [aloud] But as long as you're alive... you have to keep searching for that reason.

But whate'er I am, nor I nor any man that but man is, With nothing shall be pleased 'til he be eased With being nothing.

About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.

It's so dreadful to have nothing to love - life is so empty - and there's nothing worse than emptiness.

Rage is really only for the good days. The truth is there's little of that left. the truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content. They are shapes only. A train, a wall, a world. Or a man. A thing dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void. No meaning to its life. Its words. Why would I seek the company of such a thing? Why?