"What terror to be left only with the absolute." Can anyone place this quote?

[hajario]

Thanks…

[Absolute]

• materializes from apparent nothingness in a dark corner *

• leers menacingly *

Looks like it’s just you and me, buddy.

[capybara]

Not much help, but it sounds like something Kierkegaard would say.

[Tevildo]

No references to those exact words that I can find.

My first thought was the following, from “East Coker” by T. S. Eliot:

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;

It might also be from Pascal’s “Pensées”, Section III:

Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Both quite some way from the query, though.

[hajario]

Thanks so far…

Maybe the context would help.

I was explaining (via email) my skeptic views to an acquaintance. She said that a world without some magic would be sad and then she wrote that quote. Of course, I could ask her but I’d rather find out without doing so.

[Northern_Piper]

It sounds to me like something CS Lewis would say; the context of your discussion with your friend would also support that source. However, I can’t point you to anything.

[ratatoskK]

I must say it has been entertaining searching for this! This is a bit similar:
http://www.bartleby.com/66/85/37785.html

QUOTATION: We, when we sow the seeds of doubt deeper than the most up-to- date and modish free-thought has ever dreamed of doing, we well know what we are about. Only out of radical skepsis, out of moral chaos, can the Absolute spring, the anointed Terror of which the time has need.
ATTRIBUTION: Thomas Mann (1875–1955), German author, critic. Leo Naphta, in “Hysterica Passio,” ch. 7, The Magic Mountain (1924).

[ratatoskK]

Here’s one by Santayana

George Santayana Quotes - BrainyQuote

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome.