your example has no clear connection to your query - which phrase do you want corrected or commented upon?

your query is no correct English, but would have to be, if possible, considered in a wider context, which, as usual, is missing in your query

gyps tends to leave out or abbreviate the salient bits of his anyway more than sparse context ... I think he means "Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but." - note I guessed a full-stop at the end of the last sentence ...

This is what we call "context":

She concludes that it is necessary, as a white person in South Africa--perhaps as a white woman, since women are, according to Coetzee, "adaptable"--to start again now, "at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity. Like a dog" http://www.swisseduc.ch/english/readinglist/c...

"With nothing but" normally continues "with nothing but the coat on his back" or "with nothing but the money she had in her pockets". This person really has nothing.

danke, CM2DD, für den wertvollen Link!

The "Not with nothing but" confuses me. Standing alone, I would understand:

Nicht mit Nichts aber...(mit wenig, mit so gut wie usw.)

Kind of odd use of the English language.

Creative, not odd :-)

It's hard to explain... it would be better spokne, wouldn't it?
She means "Not with 'nothing but the money in my pocket' or 'nothing but the coat on my back'" but really with nothing, period - no buts!

"spoken" would be better written, on the other hand ...

Ich glaube, es ist dahingehend gemeint, dass es noch schlimmer ist als 'nichts außer (dem Hemd auf dem Leibe o.ä.).

Nicht mit 'nichts außer'. Sondern noch schlimmer: Mit gar nichts.

Not with 'nothin but ...'. With 'nothing at all'.

I can't say it in any way that makes sense to me. Maybe I've the wrong accent.

Selkie, vielleicht wird der Sinn in dieser Schreibweise klarer:

With (absolutely) nothing. Not "with nothing but...". With nothing.

*Plink* (the sound of a Groschen falling)