It is only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

-Korzeniowski
  An Outcast of the Islands, pt.3, ch.2.

Now we know nothing, nothing is richer now Because of all he was.O friend we have loved Must it be thus with you?öand if it must be How can men bear laboriously to live?

-Cornford, Frances ne¤  e Darwin
  'Rupert Brooke'.

'For I don't,'says Jo,'I don't know nothink.'

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^3  Bleak House, ch.16.

To do nothing and get something, formed a boy's ideal of a manly career.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Sybil, bk.1, ch.5.

The twentieth century had a wonderful capacity for seeing nothing as the sum of everything.

-Dudek, Louis
Collected in Notebooks1960^1994 (1994).

Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief.

-Faulkner,William Harrison
   Wilborne. The Wild Palms,'Wild Palms', no.5.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. See Defoe 258:25.

-Frank, Anne
  Letter to  Jean Baptiste Le Roy,13 Nov.

Nobody can't do nothing never at all for Irelandöyou can't help people against their will; that's what it comes toölet it go, let it go.

-Freeman, Edward Augustus
  Letter to Edith Thompson, 29  Jan.

The artist should not only paint what hesees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also omit to paint that which he sees before him.

-Friedrich, Caspar David
Quoted in Caspar David Friedrich1774^1840, Tate Gallery (1972).

From all I can learn, he'sgot no business, no income, and no connection worth speaking of; but then, I know nothingönobody tells me anything.

-Galsworthy,John
  The Man of Property, pt.1, ch.1.

The alcohol made the present enough, it held her in its golden hand, where past and future were comprehended, where nothing mattered, nothing was lost, where everything could be known and forgiven, where she herself could be whole at last.

-Gee, Maggie
  Lost Children, ch.35.

The House of Peers, throughout the war, Did nothing in particular, And did it very well: Yet Britain set the world ablaze In good King George's glorious days!

-Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)
  Lord Mountarat's song, Iolanthe, act 2.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

-Ginsberg, Allen
  Howl and Other Poems,'America'.

It really means nothing in this country whatsoeveröbut then being a writer here means nothing either.

-Golding, Sir William (Gerald)
  On winning the Nobel prize. Quoted in the Observer, 31 May.

Science is the only truth and it is the great lie. It knows nothing, and people think it knows everything. It is misrepresented. People think that science is electricity, automobilism, and dirigible balloons. It is something very different. It is life devouring itself. It is the sensibility transformed into intelligence. It is the need to know stifling the need to live. It is the genius of knowledge vivisecting the vital genius.

-Gourmont, Re¤  my de
  Promenades philosophiques (translated by Glen S Burne, 1966).

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothingö absolutely nothingöhalf somuchworthdoing assimply messing about in boats.

-Grahame, Kenneth
  The Wind in the Willows, ch.1.

Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever† Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would no longer be the daily possibility of love dying.

-Greene, (Henry) Graham
  The Quiet  American, pt.1, ch.3.

   The most basic law of economics†that one cannot get something for nothing.

-Harrod, Sir Roy
  Towards a Dynamic Economics.

There isnothing good tobe had inthe country, or ifthere is, they will not let you have it.

-Hazlitt,William
  The Round Table,'Observation on Mr Wordsworth's Poem The Excursion'.

All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.

-Hazlitt,William
Of  Turner's painting, quoted in  J Lindsay  Turner: The Man and his  Art (1985).