“Nature abhors a vacuum” – The Famous Writers Edition

FAMOUS PROVERBIAL QUOTE: “Nature abhors a vacuum.”        François Rabelais (c. 1494-1553)        Gargantua and Pantagruel (1534)        Quoting an old Latin proverb (“Natura abhorret vacuum.”)

WILLIAMS COUNTERQUOTE: BRICK: “Well, they say nature hates a vacuum, Big Daddy.” BIG DADDY: “That’s what they say, but sometimes I think that a vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.”        Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)        American playwright        Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)

MENCKEN COUNTERQUOTE: “Nature abhors a moron.”        H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)        American journalist, critic and curmudgeon        Chrestomathy (1949)

THOREAU COUNTERQUOTE: “Most men are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a  vacuum, and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man’s nobler faculties.”        Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)        American writer and philosopher        Entry in his Journal, April 27, 1854

PARKER COUNTERQUOTE: “They seldom hear, when they are spoken to; It’s because their heads are so full Of little gems of old-world philosophy — You know the old crack: Nietzsche abhors a vacuum.”        Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)        American writer and wit        In her poem “College Boys: A Hymn of Hate”         The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker (2001)

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