Oblivion
consciousness permanently ceases upon death
Oblivion is an eternal state of lack of awareness thought by some to occur after death. This idea contradicts beliefs that there is an afterlife, such as a heaven or hell, after death. The idea of eternal oblivion stems from the idea that the brain creates the mind; therefore, when the brain dies, the mind ceases to exist. The name of the idea derives from the original meaning of the word, referring to a state of forgetfulness or distraction, or a state of being completely forgotten.
Quotes
edit- It's calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion.
- [Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.
- Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.
- I fear oblivion. I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark.
- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
- There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it.
- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
- Only the dead could afford oblivion.
- Robert Jordan, New Spring, Chapter 1: The Hook. p. 5 (January 2004)
- No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.
- Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
- Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.
- Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
- I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.
- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
- Wishing to grab the life with nothingness
wanting to erase the sigh of tiredness
forgetting myself completely from my being
why do I seek embrace of yours
do not ask me, I know not,
I am in oblivion.- Suman Pokhrel, I'm in Oblivion
- Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
- Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
- As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.
- Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
- Then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before...and it was blissful oblivion, better than firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world.
- Oblivion - what a blessing...for the mind to dwell a world away from pain.
- Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
edit- Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 564-65.
- Oblivion is not to be hired.
- Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia, Chapter V.
- For those sacred powers
Tread on oblivion: no desert of ours
Can be entombed in their celestial breasts.- William Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, Book III. Song II, Stanza 23.
- It is not in the storm nor in the strife
We feel benumb'd, and wish to be no more,
But in the after-silence on the shore,
When all is lost, except a little life.- Lord Byron, Lines on Hearing that Lady Byron was Ill, line 9.
- Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past.
- Thomas Carlyle, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, Introduction, Chapter I.
- And o'er the past oblivion stretch her wing.
- Homer, Odyssey, Book XXIV, line 557. Pope's translation.
- He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.
- Job, VII. 10.
- Injuriarum remedium est oblivio.
- Oblivion is the remedy for injuries.
- Seneca the Younger, Epistles, 94. Quoting from an old poet, also found in Syrus.
- What's past and what's to come is strew'd with husks
And formless ruin of oblivion.- William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act IV, scene 5, line 166.
- Eo magis præfulgebant quod non videbantur.
- But from your mind's chilled sky
It needs must drop, and lie with stiffened wings
Among your soul's forlornest things;
A speck upon your memory, alack!
A dead fly in a dusty window-crack.- Francis Thompson, "Manus Animam Pinxit", St. 2.