Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Out of nothing   /aʊt əv nˈəθɪŋ/   Listen
Out of nothing

adverb
1.
Without warning.  Synonyms: from nowhere, out of thin air.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Out of nothing" Quotes from Famous Books



... to comprehend how something could be produced out of nothing, supposed a matter pre-existent to the Earth in its present shape, which afterwards received form and order from some powerful cause. According to them, God was not the Creator, but the Architect of the universe, in ranging and disposing ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... thousand fiery tongues, as from some hundred-headed monster, shot out incessantly, and licking the air a moment, were gone forever. Occasionally this thick, cloudy veil concealed all but the spars of the enemy from sight, and then the tall masts seemed rising, by some potent spell, out of nothing; occasionally the terrific explosions would rend and tear asunder the curtain, and, for an instant, the black hulls would loom out threateningly, and then disappear. The roar of three hundred guns shook the island and fort unremittingly: ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... of the Sabbath is essential to the faith; for such only as observe the Sabbath confess that the earth will be renewed: because He who created it out of nothing will renew it."—David Kimchi, on ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... in giving an air of grace and elegance to a room is astonishing. White curtains really create a room out of nothing. No matter how coarse the muslin, so it be white and hang in graceful folds, there is a charm in it that supplies the want of multitudes of ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Finance" had stayed in his mind. Modernly the name seemed briefly to suggest some one who made a lot of money out of nothing but audacity. Certainly it was not being applied to soldiers or statesmen. This was interesting. If he made a lot of money he could move to the country and have plenty of room for the dog. And it seemed about the only field of adventure left for ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... good without the galley and his tools. Not a bad chap to have, though, Mr Poole, if we was to land in a sort of Robinson Crusoe island. There's worse messmates at a time like that than a chap as can knock up decent wittles out of nothing; make a good pot of soup out of a flannel-shirt and an old shoe, and roast meat out of them knobs and things like cork-blocks as you find growing on trees. Some of them cookie chaps too, like the Camel, are precious keen about the nose, long-headed and knowing. ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... delicate, exquisite—sometimes the haunting sweetness of some distant harmony, half heard, half divined. And now and then a form, usually unknown, almost always smiling and friendly, visible for a few moments—the space of a fire-fly's incandescence—then fading—entering her orbit out of nothing and, going into ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... have the herd on the run in no time if he was to come out to-night. Never knew a human being who could stir up so much trouble out of nothing as he can. We're coming up with the herd now. Be careful where you ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... conscious of the limits of the realms of the natural and the religious, and are convinced of the possibility of a harmony between the two. For his casual utterances against a "creation" of single species always combine with the word creation the idea of that direct creation out of nothing, without intervening agencies, which is entirely correct for the idea of the first, origin of the universe, but which for the origin of the single formations within the universe is neither asked for by the religious view of ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... the mists under the hills on an autumn morning are but gross reflections of it; moonshine on lovers is earthy compared with it; song sung most charmingly and stirring the dearest recollections is but a failure in the human attempt to reach its embrace and be dissolved in it. It is out of Nothing that are woven those fine poems of which we carry but vague rhythms in the head:—and that Woman who is a shade, the Insaisissable, whom several have enshrined in melody—well, her Christian name, her maiden name, and, as I personally believe, her married name as ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... old man who went about that mill, often saying, "I hain't got no book l'arnin' like the rest of you." He was the man who owned the mill. He had made it with his own genius out of nothing. He had become rich and honored. Every man in the mill ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... art-ornaments, that only "strinkled," Barbara said, in two rooms, would be charmingly "crowsy" in one. And up stairs there would be such nice space for cushioning and flouncing, and making upholstery out of nothing, that you couldn't do here, because in these spyglass houses the sleeping-rooms were all bedstead, and fireplace, and ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... know of nothing but actual present, and their god—who will no more endure another god as his equal than a citizen's wife will admit a second woman to her husband's house—is said to have created the world out of nothing for no other purpose but to be worshipped ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... think infinite wisdom. Everything you see, everything you can dream of or think of, has been suggested to you by your surroundings, by nature. Man cannot rise above nature; below nature man cannot fall. Imagine, if you please, the creation of a single atom. Can any one here imagine the creation out of nothing of one atom? Can any one here imagine the destruction of one atom? Can you imagine an atom being changed to nothing? Can you imagine nothing being changed to an atom? There is not a solitary person here with an imagination strong enough to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... he nor the others at home had ever divested themselves of the idea that I was not succeeding, and never would succeed in New Zealand, because I had not at once made a fortune out of nothing, or discovered gold for the picking up. Of course, they were not right. I had, considering my youth and ignorance on going out to New Zealand, done admirably. It was necessary to undergo a term of probation and education ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... created positive institutions of credit, defined by law and sanctioned by the force of the state. Pure enacted institutions which are strong and prosperous are hard to find. It is too difficult to invent and create an institution, for a purpose, out of nothing. The electoral college in the Constitution of the United States is an example. In that case the democratic mores of the people have seized upon the device and made of it something quite different from what ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... wish I could get so much fun out of nothing as you seem able to," said the brakeman, who was particularly down on tramps. "I reckon the super'll give you something to laugh about directly that won't seem so ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... next half-hour excitement within the dwelling gradually increased. It grew out of nothing—out of Mrs. Maldon's admirable calm in receiving the message of the telegram—until it affected like an atmospheric disturbance the ground floor—the sitting-room where Mrs. Maldon was spending nervous force in the effort to preserve an absolutely tranquil mind, the kitchen where Rachel ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... expounded by Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, and Robert J. Burdette, is purely American. Artemus Ward could get laughs out of nothing, by mixing the absurd and the unexpected, and then backing the combination with a solemn face and earnest manner. For instance, he was fond of such incongruous statements as: "I once knew a man in New Zealand ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... These two philosophies not merely affected the thinking of Jew and Mohammedan but really transformed it from religious and ethical discussions into metaphysical systems. In the Bible and similarly in the Koran we have a purely personal view of God and the world. God is a person, he creates the world—out of nothing to be sure—but nevertheless he is thought of doing it in the manner in which a person does such things with a will and a purpose in time and place. He puts a soul into man and communicates to him laws and prohibitions. Man must obey these laws because they are ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... it would be a wonderful thing, but wonderful things don't happen just because they're wonderful. Only because they're possible, and this isn't. Let me quote that distinguished Hittitologist, Johannes Friedrich: 'Nothing can be translated out of nothing.' Or that later but not less distinguished Hittitologist, Selim von Ohlmhorst: 'Where are you ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper

... graphic is original creation on a miniature scale, and in this it differs from that of the engineer, which is constructive, or that of the scientist which is analytical; for the artist in a sense creates something out of nothing, and therefore starts from the stand-point of simple feeling, and not from that of a pre-existing necessity. This, by the hypothesis of the case, is true also of the Parent Mind, for at the stage ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... tyrannical king, into another nation? Well, saith the Lord, "I am;" I, who give all things a being, will give a being to my promise. I will make Pharaoh hearken, and the people obey. Well then, what is it that this name of God will not answer? It is a creating name,—a name that can bring all things out of nothing by a word. If he be such as he is, then he can make of us what he pleases. If our souls had this name constantly engraven on our hearts, O what power would divine promises and threatenings have with us! "I, even I, am he that comforteth thee," saith ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... creatures out of nothing, and tells them not whence they come and whither they go. They have only to go their way; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... his body, that it may assume a nature contrary to its former one, and whereof the idea cannot exist in the mind (III:x.) But that a man, from the necessity of his own nature, should endeavour to become non-existent, is as impossible as that something should be made out of nothing, as everyone will see for himself, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... all materials for labour, dreams are the hardest; and the artificer in ideas is the chief of workers, who out of nothing will make a piece of work that may stop a child from crying or lead nations to higher things. For what is it to be a poet? It is to see at a glance the glory of the world, to see beauty in all its forms and manifestations, to feel ugliness like a pain, to resent the wrongs of others as bitterly ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... substance which is so brilliant, so swift and so unknown, are these other substances which roll in the immensity of space, eternal as they seem infinite? I have no idea. Has a necessary being, of sovereign intelligence, created them out of nothing, or has he arranged them? did he produce this order in Time or before Time? What even is this Time of which I speak? I cannot define it. O God! Teach me, for I am enlightened neither by other men's darkness ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... has yielded to the transcendent God, and the principle of evolution is put aside in favour of the fiat of creation. Yet for all this the aim of the narrator is not mainly a religious one. Had he only meant to say that God made the world out of nothing, and made it good, he could have said so in simpler words, and at the same time more distinctly. There is no doubt that he means to describe the actual course of the genesis of the world, and to be true to nature in doing so; he means to give a cosmogonic ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... caprice, and would even feign a little more surprise than they felt, upon occasion. But if during her preparations she had given umbrage to one of the boys, her retreat was soon invaded with cries of—"Ah! I see you, making birthday presents out of nothing and a quarter of a yard of ribbon!" Or—"There you are! At it again, with two old visiting cards and a ha'porth of flannel!" And only Darling's tenderest kisses could appease Madam Liberality's ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... a family have such fun. They could make up stories and pretend things and invent games out of nothing. And my Fairies were so fond of them that I couldn't keep them away from the dolls' house. They would go and have fun with Meg and Peg and Kilmanskeg and Gustibus and Peter Piper, even when I had work for them to do in Fairyland. But there, I was so fond of that shabby disrespectable family ...
— Racketty-Packetty House • Frances H. Burnett

... we have shown the doctrine of Matter or corporeal substance to have been the main pillar and support of Scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of Atheism and Irreligion. Nay, so great a difficulty has it been thought to conceive Matter produced out of nothing, that the most celebrated among the ancient philosophers, even of those who maintained the being of a God, have thought Matter to be uncreated and co-eternal with Him. How great a friend material substance has been to Atheists in all ages were needless to relate. All their monstrous systems ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... and Catriona, I shall watch you pretty close in the next days, and see if you are so bold as to be laughing at papa and mamma. It is true we were not so wise as we might have been, and made a great deal of sorrow out of nothing; but you will find as you grow up that even the artful Miss Barbara, and even the valiant Mr. Alan, will be not so very much wiser than their parents. For the life of man upon this world of ours is a funny business. They talk of the angels ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Fleda, in a tone again steady and clear,—"I must go home to see about getting up a dinner. I am the greatest hand at making something out of nothing, aunt Miriam, that ever you saw. There is nothing like practice. I only wish the man uncle Orrin talks about would come along once ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... by laws and rules are parasites. Others shed their strength to bring these laws out of nothing into the light of day, but the law-abiders live at their ease—they ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... imagine of Him, is far more wonderful than what we do and can. I mean One who is sovereign over His own will and actions, though always according to the eternal Rule of right and wrong, which is Himself. I mean, moreover, that He created all things out of nothing, and preserves them every moment, and could destroy them as easily as He made them; and that, in consequence, He is separated from them by an abyss, and is incommunicable in all His attributes. And further, He has stamped ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... contradict [the senses], wholly founded as it is on the senses? And if they are not true, then all reason as well is rendered false." The first principle in nature is asserted by Lucretius to be that "Nothing is ever gotten out of nothing." "A thing never returns to nothing, but all things after disruption go back to the first bodies of matter." If there were not imperishable seeds of things, atoms, "first-beginnings of solid singleness," then, Lucretius urges, "infinite time gone by and lapse of days must ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... should be forsaking the lines of nature were we to imagine for a moment that the new creature was to be formed out of nothing. Nothing can be made out of nothing. Matter is uncreatable and indestructible; Nature and man can only form and transform. Hence when a new animal is made, no new clay is made. Life merely enters into already existing matter, assimilates ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... of the fourth day of Michael's journey when he saw in the distance a cavalcade of camels riding towards him. It had emerged out of nothing; suddenly it became clearer and clearer. Was it mirage? It was still so distant that it might yet ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... with eloquent tongue to recount what mischief Scholastic Philosophy had brought upon the world; then tried to prove 'That Creation was impossible.' At this last point I stood out in opposition. 'But how can one create Something out of Nothing?' said he. 'That is not the question,' answered I; 'the question is, Whether such a Being as God can or cannot give existence to what has yet none.' He seemed embarrassed, and added, 'But the Universe is eternal.'—'You are in a circle,' said I; 'how will ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... them it would be of consequence. But what I think of consequence to us is—that He makes them, not out of nothing, but out of Himself. Why should my poor notion of God's how be of importance, so long as, when I see a horse like yours, Mr. Crawford, I say, God be praised? It is of eternal importance to love the ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... and make it a point of honour for his secret to be kept? But once told, the new life would no longer stand by itself as the new life, cut off from all contact with the past. Its success, its possibility, must lie in its absolute separateness, with obscurity behind—as though he had come out of nothing into this very room, on that winter morning when ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... ecstasies over this irreverent trifling, Delsarte did not disdain to caricature it, and gave us a most comical little performance. Here again we see how he could transform everything, and make something out of nothing! ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... that work has been produced by small insects, and, so to speak, out of nothing, is indeed wonderful," observed Mr Henley as we strolled along together. "Do you know, Marsden, I have often thought that it is intended that we should learn from these coral reefs what great results are produced in the moral ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... directed to the gentlemen at the ten pinnacles, or with the church porch at his door." Again, to the same (1761): "It is mere pedantry in Gothicism to stick to nothing but altars and tombs, and there is no end to it, if we are to sit upon nothing but coronation chairs, nor drink out of nothing but chalices or flagons." Writing to Mason in 1758 about certain incongruities in one of the latter's odes, he gives the following Doresque illustration of his point. "If you should lead me into a superb Gothic building, with a thousand clustered ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... sure I don't know what you mean, Cyprian, by poetry without rhyme or verse, any more than I should if you talked about pictures that were painted on nothing, or statues that were made out of nothing. How can you tell that anything is poetry, I should like to know, if there is neither a regular line with just so many syllables, nor a rhyme? Of course you can't. I never have any thoughts too beautiful to put in verse: nothing can be too ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... spirit and that eternal substance which lies behind and underneath all that is, and that relation is the relation between the "King Eternal" and that over which he presides and which he controls. So out of nothing ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various

... "Then make no wrong out of nothing," cried Helen. "If you break confidence with your husband, that confidence will never, never unite again—your ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... what he did become. Place the naturally gifted child of intelligent parents among savages, and he becomes a savage. Whatever a man is, society has made him. Ideas are not creations that spring from the head of the individual out of nothing, or through inspiration from above; they are products of social life, of the Spirit of the Age, raised in the head of the individual. An Aristotle could not possibly have the ideas of a Darwin, and a Darwin could not choose but think otherwise than an Aristotle. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... first causes. They do not evolve conduct out of nothing. The child does this, the man does that, because of something; because of many things. If we do not like the way people behave, and wish them to behave better, we should, if we are rational beings, study the conditions that produce ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... create whatsoever he would out of nothing, is it a hard Matter for him to restore to its former Nature that which hath been changed in its Form? I don't dispute anxiously which Way it can be done; it is sufficient to me, that he who hath promised that it shall be so, is so true, that he can't ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... Where shall I so easily decoy, from benevolent credulity, those superfluities to myself? Heaven only knows, my dear, dear, darling London, what I lose in you! O public charities! O public institutions! O banks that belie mathematical axioms and make lots out of nothing! O ancient constitution always to be questioned! O modern improvements that never answer! O speculations! O companies! O usury laws which guard against usurers, by making as many as possible! O churches in which no one profits, save the parson, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that, if Miss Liston persisted in making Pamela her heroine, she would have to supply from her own resources a large supplement of passion. Pamela was far too deficient in the commodity to be made anything of without such re-enforcement, even by an art more adept at making much out of nothing than Miss Liston's straightforward method could ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope

... (corps) and what concerns them, all that which immediately proceeds from supreme power is incomprehensible to us, as it itself [i.e., supreme power] is to our minds. To create, or to make anything out of nothing, this is an idea we cannot conceive of, for the reason that in all that we can know, we do not find any model which represents it. GOD alone, then, can create, while nature can only produce. We must suppose ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... looked about the circle of attentive faces. "That's all. But it's enough, isn't it? To come out of nothing, going nowheres, and run into a dirty Indian who says: 'By Jove, that's the first decent cup of tea I've had in ten years!' And then along comes this Terhune and says that he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... is capable—in penetrating through the paths of knowledge up to that first series of second causes which circle like a glory round the fountain-head. We may not put the question, "How did God create all things out of nothing?" but, all things having been created, it is quite legitimate to inquire how the circles of their manifold operations are carried on, and in what respect the things that be do affect ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... minister's own hand, or under his own eye. It might not have seemed a very fine garden to some people. There were only common flowers and fruits in it, and still more common vegetables; but the courage, the skill, the patience which had made it out of nothing, must have been appreciated anywhere. To the moderately intelligent and immoderately critical community of Nethermuir, the visible facts of kirk and manse, of glebe and garden, appealed more clearly and directly than did the building up ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... is formed by beds of limestone bent like a rainbow, as in Fig. 10. Their edges constitute the cliff; the flat arch which they form with their backs is covered with pine forests and meadows, extending for three or four leagues in the direction of Sixt. Whether the whole mountain was called out of nothing into the form it possesses, or created first in the form of a level mass, and then actually bent and broken by external force, is quite irrelevant to our present purpose; but it is impossible to describe its form without appearing to imply the latter alternative; and ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... things go on as they are.' But it was the pretension to a part in the name of Ormont which so violently offended the democratic aristocrat, and caused her to resent it as an assault on the family honour, by 'a woman springing up out of nothing'—a woman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... her talk of creation, as if creating things out of nothing was the commonest occurrence in the world. Glaudot stood up. "All right, ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger

... —Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle Toby, in the simplicity of his heart,—but Modesty.—My sister, I dare say, added he, does not care to let a man come so near her.... I will not say whether my uncle Toby had completed the sentence or not;—'tis for his ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... change a piece of silver, he informs you wherein the Son differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are told in reply that the Son is inferior to the Father; if you inquire whether the bath is ready, the answer is that the Son was made out of nothing." The subtle questions pertaining to the Trinity were the theme of universal conversation, even amid the calamities of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... every one parted from the essential life, who has not the Power by which he lives one with him, holding pure and free and true the soul he sent forth from the depths of his being. I repent me of the ignorance wherein I ever said that God made man out of nothing: there is no nothing out of which to make anything; God is all in all, and he made us out of himself. He who is parted from God has no original nothingness with which to take refuge. He is a live discord, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... 'tis like the breath of an vnfeed Lawyer, you gaue me nothing for't, can you make no vse of nothing Nuncle? Lear. Why no Boy, Nothing can be made out of nothing ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... that the Lacedaemonians are a great nation because they bruise their ears; the far-fetched notion, which is 'really too bad,' that Simonides uses the Lesbian (?) word, (Greek), because he is addressing a Lesbian. The whole may also be considered as a satire on those who spin pompous theories out of nothing. As in the arguments of the Euthydemus and of the Cratylus, the veil of irony is never withdrawn; and we are left in doubt at last how far in this interpretation of Simonides Socrates is 'fooling,' how far he is ...
— Protagoras • Plato

... sentence gave rise to all the disputes of the old philosophers, from Parmenides down to Aristotle, and that was composed of three words, ex nihilo nihil—nothing can come out of nothing—upon which were raised the doctrines of the atomists, incorporealists, epicureans, theists, and atheists, and all the other races of dreamers that have disturbed the common sense, lethargy, or comfort of the world ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... own char-a-banc—the crank-shaft's broken," Ferdinand said to me, as he asked me for the tenth time to get up beside him; "I've got no one, and I'm going to win this race. If you could conjure up a new crankshaft out of nothing, you would still be three behind the last in, and all the town out to laugh at you. Get up, Lal, and have done with it. I tell you I knew it from ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... hands. "... I feel more and more strongly that our marriage would be a mistake... " she beat. And the voices cried: "Fleetly! Ah, Fleetly." What could have possessed him to write such a letter! What could have led up to it! It came out of nothing. His last letter had been all about a fumed-oak bookcase he had bought for "our" books, and a "natty little hall-stand" he had seen, "a very neat affair with a carved owl on a bracket, holding three hat-brushes ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... make out of nothing. God alone can create. When a carpenter makes a table, he must have wood; when a tailor makes a coat, he must have cloth. They are only makers and not creators. God needs no material or tools. When we make anything, we make it part by part; but ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... able-bodied men accustomed to healthy exercise into a serviceable and even a victorious army, but we made a great mistake. The commissariat and sanitary service and especially the military train-corps would have to be created out of nothing. When in June the governor of one State reported that his infantry regiment was formed and only waiting for rifles, uniforms and the necessary military wagons, and when another declared that his two regiments of cavalry and six batteries were ready to leave for the front as soon as horses, guns, ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... him in his ways, my dear: always dreaming about new inventions, and making fortunes out of nothing. I do hope your uncle will not listen to ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... one place, and otherwise in another, but the Self-same, and the Self-same, and the Self-same, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, didst in the Beginning, which is of Thee, in Thy Wisdom, which was born of Thine own Substance, create something, and that out of nothing. For Thou createdst heaven and earth; not out of Thyself, for so should they have been equal to Thine Only Begotten Son, and thereby to Thee also; whereas no way were it right that aught should be equal to Thee, which was not of Thee. And aught else besides Thee ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... I to help thee; fain beyond all prayer, Beyond all thought fain to redeem thee, torn 1000 More timeless from me sorrowing than the dream That was thy sister; so shalt thou be too, Thou but a vision, shadow-shaped of sleep, By grief made out of nothing; now but once I touch, but once more hold thee, one more kiss This last time and none other ever more Leave on thy lips and leave them. Go; thou wast My heart, my heart's blood, life-blood of my life, My child, my nursling; ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... to repine? Even a cook must sometimes be excused, since he was not God to create something out of nothing. Peradventure, the timely indisposition of the babe within the tent would offer distraction. In the interludes of stirring the pots and declaiming against fate and the misdemeanours of the masalchi, the cook soothed his ruffled spirits with a pull at ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... material things. The idea in his consciousness is powerless save in so far as it is a guide to combinations and modifications which are latent in reality. The man who works with his hands does not create out of nothing a new totality. Even genius is conditioned by the elements he works with and upon. He can do nothing with his materials beyond what it is in themselves to yield. This sense of co-operation is strongly marked in the higher grades of activity. The world may be in the making, as Bergson ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... thoughts at all, — the minds that were blank of intelligence, — the eyes that opened but to stare at the new teacher! What amount of culture, what distance of days and months, would bring something out of nothing! ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... hypocrites. It is always the divine rule that the cross and affliction should precede consolation. God never comforts any but the afflicted, just as he never quickens unto life any but the dead, nor ever justifies any but sinners! He always creates all things out of nothing. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... Bihan," I said impatiently, "translate it, won't you? You and Max Fortin make a lot of mystery out of nothing, it seems." ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... artist was but for the adornment of the rich man's triumph—in case the rich man were, on his side, so feeble as to need to have his triumph adorned. He himself had taken hold of practical things at an early age; he had made something out of nothing—a good deal out of nothing; and compared with this act of creation the fabrication of verses or of pictures was a ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... been created out of nothing. Look at that thick roll of hard flesh on your strong arm! That was not always there: you could not climb a tree when I first saw you. But you willed and tried and willed and tried; and your will created out of nothing the roll on your arm until you had your desire, and could draw ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... completely puzzled. I would have mentioned it before, only it seemed to be making a mountain out of nothing." ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... Argentina would have to make payments to England and would come to it and ask it for drafts on London, which, by remitting this bill to be sold in London, it would be able to supply. International finance is so often regarded as a machinery by which paper wealth is manufactured out of nothing, that it is very important to remember that all this paper wealth only acquires value by being ultimately based on something that is grown or made and wanted to keep people alive or comfortable, or at least happy in the belief that they have got something that they ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... Flying Corps. His previous history. Given command of the Military Wing at Farnborough, to make something out of nothing. Helped by Major Brancker, who is appointed Deputy Director of Military Aeronautics. Previous history of Major Brancker. His flight as observer during cavalry manoeuvres in India, 1911. Returns to England, learns to fly, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... historian of the Deity, makes us (if we may use such an expression) witnesses of the formation of the universe. He tells us that the Eternal, tired of his inaction, one fine day took it into his head to create a world that was necessary to his glory. To effect this, he forms matter out of nothing; a pure spirit produces a substance which has no affinity to himself; although this God fills all space with his immensity, yet still he found room enough in it to admit the universe, as well as all the material bodies ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... in my face. I cannot reason it out. There are a great many things I cannot reason out, but which I believe. I never could reason out the creation. I can see the world, but I cannot tell how God made it out of nothing. But almost every man will admit ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody

... form of the soul itself."(988) Agreeable to this conception is the further Thomistic teaching that sanctifying grace is not directly created by God, but drawn (educta) from the potentia obedientialis of the soul.(989) Not even the Scotists, though they held grace to be created out of nothing(990) claimed that it was ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... of legume plants so that the fixation of free nitrogen exceeds the utilization of nitrogen in animal growth, then the soil will be enriched in that element, although with the same growth of plants it would be enriched more rapidly without pasturing; for animals are not made out of nothing. Meat, milk, and wool are all highly ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... most famous and successful opponent was Athanasius, the writer of this biography) maintained that the Son of God was not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but created by Him out of nothing, and before the world. His opinions were condemned in the famous Council of Nicaea, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... with this, and went continually to see him competing and displaying himself in these exercises; but the better sort that saw him, pitied the cupidity and ambition that made one who had risen from utter poverty to extreme wealth, and out of nothing into greatness, unwilling to admit any limit to his high fortune, or to be content with being admired, and quietly enjoying what he had already got: why, as if he still were indigent, should he at so great an age leave his glory and his triumphs to go into ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... spirit formed of flaming light; I saw the monstrous worlds arise out of nothing: thou art of dust, and of ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... men, can find or make a party question, and quarrel out of any thing or out of nothing. There was a Scotch pedlar, who used to come every Thursday evening to our school to supply our various wants and fancies. The Scotch pedlar died, and two candidates offered to supply his place, an English lad of the name of Dutton, and a Jew boy of the name of Jacob. Dutton ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... returning to God which in reality is never concluded on earth but yet leaves behind in the soul a divine home sickness, which never again ceases. But man cannot ignore the creation as the Mystics would. Although created out of nothing, that is, through and out of God, he cannot of his own power resolve himself back into this nothingness. The self-annihilation of which Tauler so often speaks is scarcely better than the sinking away of the human soul in Nirvana, ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... idea of a being more perfect than my own; for to derive it from nothing was manifestly impossible; and, because it is no less repugnant that the more perfect should follow and depend upon the less perfect than that something should come forth out of nothing, I could not ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... all emergencies, my lord; it is wonderful, your foresight; but I conceive that you are making something out of nothing. The diplomatic brain is ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... to have conceived the possibility of an absolute creation, by means of which the gods, or one of them, should have evolved out of nothing all that exists: the creation was for them merely the setting in motion of pre-existing elements, and the creator only an organizer of the various materials floating in chaos. Popular fancy in different towns varied the names of the creators and the methods employed by them; as centuries passed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... cannot explain. Yet it does not in consequence follow that it is impossible to believe it to be. For we are bound in reason to be assured of many things of which we can form no conception. Reason compels us to be assured of the reality of space, of eternity, of the creation of the universe out of nothing, and, perhaps we may add, of the being of GOD; the being of GOD, I mean, considered apart from His nature and attributes. Yet we cannot form any intelligent conception of these realities. We cannot shape to our apprehension ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson

... real dove in which to appear, though He did not assume it into unity of person. Wherefore, after the words quoted above, Augustine adds: "Just as it behooved the Son of God not to deceive men, so it behooved the Holy Ghost not to deceive. But it was easy for Almighty God, who created all creatures out of nothing, to frame the body of a real dove without the help of other doves, just as it was easy for Him to form a true body in Mary's womb without the seed of a man: since the corporeal creature obeys its Lord's command and will, both ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... Pancras, the draft in payment absorbing practically all his balance. Eileen was delighted with it. They spent that evening in the nearest approach to festivity that they had known for several years. It was, as it were, the crown of the long waiting for something out of nothing. All those little acerbities which creep into the manner of two married people who are always trying to round the corner fell away, and they sat together in one large chair, talking and laughing over the countless tricks which Providence—that 'fat chough'—had played them. They carried their light-heartedness ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... come to him regularly, and each one contained some important clue, which, followed up, invariably led to evidence of value. Slowly, surely, out of nothing as it were, the chain was forged. Now came the names of persons who had seen or had talked with some of the accused upon the fatal day, now a hint which turned light upon some dark spot in their records. Again ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... design in a theological age, can really be explained by the struggle for existence. But in trying to make an occasional and partial cause universal and ultimate, it has undertaken the impossible task of bringing the greater out of the less; which really means bringing their difference out of nothing—and this is creation with the First Cause left out; that is, spontaneous creation. It is from first to last an "aggregation" theory, and has to face the insupportable burdens which such a theory brings with it. Haunted by a false analogy drawn from the political organism whose members ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... And he never lost sight of her till she entered the salon-cabin. He saw a star fall out of nothing into nothing. She was sorry! The moment brewed a thousand wild suggestions. To abduct her, to carry her away into the mountains, to cast his dream to the four winds, to take her in spite of herself. He laid ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... are dreams, dear, and a mad world spins them out of nothing.... Forgive me ... I have been sewing on my wedding-gown again. And it is ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... did go. He climbed aboard the stranded craft—a forlorn picture she made, lying on her side in the mud—and was surprised to find how much had been manufactured "out of nothing." Her seams, those which the sun had opened, were caulked neatly; her deck was clean and white; she was partially rigged, with new and old canvas and ropes; and to his landsman's eyes she looked almost fit for sea. But when he ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... accident; some of malice, and some only of misfortune; some innocently and unknowingly, and whom we never properly hurt. Some, also, by our mere existence; some by our best actions; some because we have helped and not hurt others; and some out of nothing else but the pure original devilry of their own evil hearts. And then, when we take all these men home to our hearts, what hearts all these men give us! Who, then, is the man here who has done to other men the most hurt? Who ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... had towers to be built and apparatus transplanted, the supply of oil must be maintained and the men fed, in the same inaccessible and distant scenes, a whole service with its routine ... had to be called out of nothing; and a new trade (that of light-keeper) to be taught, recruited ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton

... What's the use of answering a little girl's letter if one has both hands full taking care of oneself and can't possibly be of the slightest use to her? Pshaw! E nihilo nihil fit! In the vernacular: You can't get results out of nothing! Moth and dust! Dust and moths! And that's all my efforts for German culture in the ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... took all of Mr. Clemm's authority to keep them quiet, and it got out that the Commissioner was expecting the end of the world, and the graves were for those that wouldn't go to heaven! Kanakas are like that, you know—spreading the silliest rumors and making a lot out of nothing—though in this case they couldn't be blamed for being considerable scared. But Mr. Clemm knew how to turn everything to account, and on the principle that the church was the safest place to be found in on the Day of Judgment, ordered that everybody should go ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... account of Creation which is fitted to solve all difficulties and to meet all objections. "Maker" in this article is used in the sense of Creator, implying that heaven and earth were called into existence out of nothing by the word of Divine power; and by "heaven and earth" are meant all creatures, visible and invisible, that have ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... God, full of love, even such a One as love seeks and yearns after, to whom faith clings, and in whom all our hopes are centred (and such is the personal God of Revelation),—and on this hypothesis the world is not God, but is distinct from Him, having had a beginning, and being created out of nothing,—or there is only one supreme form of existence, and the world is eternal, and not distinct from God; there is absolutely but One, and this eternal One comprehends all, and is itself all in all; so that there is no where any real and ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... business for me. My imagination began to construct dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keep the run of them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead! The wave of coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocating every joint in me. All ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... search after the ass; each of them extolling the other for his excellence in braying. The story spread all over the adjacent villages, and the devil, who sleeps not, as he loves to sow discord wherever he can, raising a bustle in the wind, and mischief out of nothing, so ordered it that all the neighboring villagers, at the sight of any of our towns-people, would immediately begin to bray, as it were hitting us in the teeth with the notable talent of our aldermen. The boys fell to it, which was the same as falling ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... man cannot see it in its holy of holies and live. And it is, like God, increate, springing out of nothing, yet the maker of all things—ever changing yet the same yesterday, to-day ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and man, and the animals were "created" by God, instantaneously, by word of mouth, out of nothing. ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... one direction was his erring force more felt than in the creation of holiday literature as we have known it for the last half-century. Creation, of course, is the wrong word; it says too much; but in default of a better word, it may stand. He did not make something out of nothing; the material was there before him; the mood and even the need of his time contributed immensely to his success, as the volition of the subject helps on the mesmerist; but it is within bounds to say that he was the chief agency in the development of holiday literature as we have known it, as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Allan so busy just now. Why did you go off together yesterday, and stay away for such a time, leaving us to entertain your guests? You're busy with something that you don't want us to know about and I'd just like to find out what it is. It always irritates me when people make mysteries out of nothing.' ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae

... it, since general laws seem sufficient for that end.... The light of Nature affords us not a single argument for a future state: this is the only one, that it is possible with God, since He who made us out of nothing can surely re-create us; and that He will do this we humbly hope." He published an ode against atheism, with which he has strangely enough often ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... complexity of strange coincidences combined, coming out of nothing as it were, advancing like spirits summoned on to the stage, all to effect this end! Think of the American Colonies; with one little exception they were perhaps the most completely non-Catholic society ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... honor," he said, icily, "but honor has nothing to do with business. As for the law, there is an old axiom which says, Out of nothing, nothing comes." ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... there was a Consensus about it. It was the very first one. It sat six days and nights. It was then delivered of the verdict that a world could not be made out of nothing; that such small things as sun and moon and stars might, maybe, but it would take years and years if there was considerable many of them. Then the Consensus got up and looked out of the window, and there was the whole ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... him to the Sea shore, with some of her Servants and Friends as she could trust; and there with an Heart equally affected with Love and Fear, she takes her last leave of him in these Words, O God, thou form'dst this Child out of nothing, and didst Cherish him in the Dark recesses of my Womb, till he was compleat in all his parts; I fearing the Cruelty of a Proud and unjust King, commit him to thy Goodness, hoping that thou who art infinitely merciful, will be pleas'd ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... fancy, by heightening every danger; representing the English and Dutch captains to be men incapable of hearing reason, or distinguishing between honest men and rogues; or between a story calculated for our own turn, made out of nothing, on purpose to deceive, and a true genuine account of our whole voyage, progress, and design; for we might many ways have convinced any reasonable creature that we were not pirates; the goods we had on board, the course we ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... instantaneously by the power of God, whether in a nebulous condition or not. So enchanting is their theory, that many profess to believe that not only were all species of animals and plants evolved from a single germ, but that even matter itself was evolved out of nothing. This theory of evolution as wide as the universe, as ponderous as the stars, is supported only by the weak stork ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... proportionable to his intention, that was omnipotent and infinitely wise; and no more, nor no less, than served to receive the form of the universal. For, had it wanted anything of what was sufficient; then must it be granted, that God created out of nothing so much new matter, as served to finish the work of the world: or had there been more of this matter than sufficed, then God did dissolve and annihilate whatsoever remained and was superfluous. And this must every reasonable soul ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... Smith? I knew him before Clayton ever got hold of him, when the chap hadn't a halfpenny to fly with, but was a most ordacious fellow at speculating and inventions, and was always up to something new. One day he had a plan for making moist sugar out of bricks—then soap out of nothing—and sweet oil out of stones. At last Clayton hears of him, and hooks him up, gets him to the chapel; first converts him, and then goes partners with him in the spekylations—let's him have as much money ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... had received while there. It was an idea early adopted by him that a "self-made man" was the highest type of the race, and to him a self-made man was one who worked like the original Creator—made everything out of nothing and ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... rejected Christian theism, because she could not understand how God had created the universe out of nothing. True, "with God, all things are possible"; but she could not understand this creation out of nothing, and therefore would not believe it. Yet (oh, inconsistency of human reasoning!) she had believed that the universe created laws; that matter gradually created mind. This was the inevitable ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... what we are able to conceive. And as we delight in our selves, and receive pleasure from the objects which surround us, sufficient to indear to us the possession and injoyment of Life, we cannot from thence but infer, that this Wise and Powerful Being is also most Good, since he has made us out of nothing to give us a Being wherein we find such Happiness, as makes us very ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... opponents—pointed proudly to the powder-mills, blast-furnaces, foundries and rolling-mills, springing up on every hand. They saw the great truth that the internal resources of the South developed with amazing rapidity; that arms were manufactured and supplies of vital need created, as it were out of nothing; but they missed the true reason for that abnormal development, which was the dire stress from isolation. They rejoiced to very elation at a popular effort, spontaneous—unanimous—supreme! But they realized little that it was ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... waves and terrific earthquakes have destroyed human lives by the millions. All creation is suffering and groaning under the curse. But it is not to be so forever. The King who comes back is also the Creator, He who called all things into existence out of nothing. He surely will set all things in order and deliver groaning creation. He will put all things back as they were in the beginning and then earth will be once more a paradise. If He would do anything less than that the dark shadow of the one who brought sin and death into the world ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein

... wisdom. To expect that men who do not honorably and intelligently conduct their private affairs will honorably and intelligently conduct the affairs of the community is to be a fool. We are told that out of nothing God made the Heavens and the earth; but out of nothing God never did and man never can, make a public sense of honor and a public conscience. Miracles are now performed but one day of the year—the twenty-ninth of February; and on leap year God is ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... my own personal friends, nay my masters: still, since I cannot quite say nothing of them I must say the plain truth, which is this; never in the whole history of art did any set of men come nearer to the feat of making something out of nothing than that little knot of painters who have raised English art from what it was, when as a boy I used to go to the Royal Academy Exhibition, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... tradition. They had no antecedent, and no fit succession. All the authorities dwell on their exceptional character. One is sorely tempted to suspect that they were in some way an accident; that such an art could not have sprung, in such perfection, out of nothing, had it been really French; that it must have had its home elsewhere—on the Rhine—in Italy—in Byzantium— or ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... without any impeachment of what I have advanced—for where shall a man converse, and find no fools in the society?—and where shall he hear the weightiest things debated, and not a great many empty weak things offered, out of which nothing can be learned, and from which nothing can be deduced?—for 'out of nothing, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... application till we find ourselves in another world, and the best place and time to begin are Here and Now. The starting point is not in time or locality, but in the mode of Thought; and if we realize that this Point of Origination is Spirit's power to produce something out of nothing, and that it does this in accordance with the natural order of substance of the particular world in which it is working, then the spiritual ego in ourselves, as proceeding direct from the Universal Spirit, should be able first, to so harmoniously combine the working of spiritual and physical ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... Madeleine who sees that everything is in order? If you give a dinner, is it not Madeleine who not only superintends all the preparations, but invents the most beautiful decorations for the table,—and out of nothing—out of leaves and flowers so common that no one would have thought of culling them, yet so wonderfully arranged that every one exclaims at their picturesque effect? When you have dull guests,—guests that put me to sleep, or out of patience,—is it not Madeleine who amuses them? How many ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... I am. There is nothing I enjoy more than planning and contriving, and making a great deal out of nothing at all. I've had a grand turn out of my boxes and cupboards, and brought to light some forgotten treasures which will come in most usefully just now. It reminds me of the time before my own marriage, when I sat stitching ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... the incarnate Christ, were all but various phases of this same attempt to cross an otherwise impassable chasm. Throughout its whole history, Jewish mysticism substituted mediate creation for immediate creation out of nothing, and the mediate beings were not created but were emanations. This view was much influenced by Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021-1070). God is to Gabirol an absolute Unity, in which form and substance are identical. Hence He cannot ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... that man creates artistic products out of nothing. What is called creation is in reality a composition, a construction raised upon a primitive material of the mind, which must be collected from the environment by means of the senses. This is the general principle summed up in the ancient axiom: Nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... father. Say that I must stay. You can certainly talk before me. So you think me very silly. What you say is astonishing! business, placing money in a bank a great matter truly. Men make mysteries out of nothing. I am very pretty this morning. Look at ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... no god (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) created the universe out of nothing, for the matter and force which enter into its ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... looked on at her for some time before she noticed him, and dimly perceived how vastly differed her homely suit and unstudied contour—painfully unstudied to fastidious eyes—from Ethelberta's well-arranged draperies, even from Picotee's clever bits of ribbon, by which she made herself look pretty out of nothing at all. Yet this negligence was his sister's essence; without it she would have been a spoilt product. She had no outer world, and her rusty black was as appropriate to Faith's unseen courses as were Ethelberta's correct lights and shades ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... words, for still there were many in the land who loved the memory of Chaka, and remembered that Dingaan had murdered him and Umhlangana also. For now that Chaka was dead, people forgot how evilly he had dealt with them, and remembered only that he was a great man, who had made the Zulu people out of nothing, as a smith fashions a bright spear from a lump of iron. Also, though they had changed masters, yet their burden was not lessened, for, as Chaka slew, so Dingaan slew also, and as Chaka oppressed, so did Dingaan oppress. Therefore Dingaan yielded to the voice of his indunas ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... persons one God, without beginning, and without end, eternal and everlasting, increate, immutable and incorporeal, invisible, infinite, incomprehensible, alone good and righteous, who created all things out of nothing, whether visible or invisible. First, he made the heavenly and invisible powers, countless multitudes, immaterial and bodiless, ministering spirits of the majesty of God. Afterward he created this visible world, heaven and earth ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... horse, but even man himself, the apes, the quadrupeds, and all animals might be regarded but as forming members of one and the same family. But are we to conclude that within this vast family which the Creator has called into existence out of nothing, there are other and smaller families, projected as it were by Nature, and brought forth by her in the natural course of events and after a long time, of which some contain but two members, as the ass and the horse, others many members, as the weasel, martin, stoat, ferret, &c., and ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... hang a few masterly sketches, vaguely tinted in Indian ink, drawn upon strips of gray paper most accurately cut but without the slightest attempt at a frame. This is all: not a seat, not a cushion, not a scrap of furniture. It is the very acme of studied simplicity, of elegance made out of nothing, of the most immaculate and incredible cleanliness. And while following the bonzes through this long suite of empty halls, we are struck by their contrast with the overflow of knickknacks scattered about our rooms in France, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... prevailed in the time of Confucius, (and before that period all seems to be fable and uncertainty) may be pretty nearly ascertained from the writings that are ascribed to that philosopher. He maintains in his physics, that "out of nothing there cannot possibly be produced any thing;—that material bodies must have existed from all eternity;—that the cause (lee, reason) or principle of things, must have had a co-existence with the things themselves;—that, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... Kate won,' he'll say. 'I want to tell you he's some beetle-cat! Look what he's come up to—and out of nothing, you ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... be forsaking the lines of nature were we to imagine for a moment that the new creature was to be found out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil—nothing can be made out of nothing. Matter is uncreatable and indestructible; Nature and man can only form and transform. Hence when a new animal is made, no new clay is made. Life merely enters into already existing matter, assimilates more of the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com