# Oblivion

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

* It's calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion.
** Fiona Apple
* [Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.
** Clive Barker
* Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.
** Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
* 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.
** J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
* Oblivion - what a blessing...for the mind to dwell a world away from pain.
** Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

### Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

    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.
** They shone forth the more that they were not seen.
** Tacitus; adapted from Annals, Book III. 76.
* 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.