quotes about Emptiness
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When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in and helps the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end result and it is full of emptiness.
-- Abbas Kiarostami -
Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
When emptiness is still, that is eternity. When it moves, that is love.
-- Adyashanti -
I begin where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures.
-- Alexander PopeSource : Alexander Pope (1853). “The poetical works of Alexander Pope”, p.73
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But you know who you are when you're on your own out there in all that emptiness. There's no past, no holding on to the scraps that are all you've got left. Everything is that minute, or maybe tomorrow, not yesterday.
-- Alexandra RipleySource : Alexandra Ripley (1992). “Scarlett: the sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the wind”, Macmillan Reference USA
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There's a disappointment there because I still feel there's an emptiness in my career that just wasn't filled.
-- Alonzo Mourning -
How loud clocks can tick when a room is empty, and one is alone!
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell, Melissa Bradshaw (2002). “Selected Poems of Amy Lowell”, p.52, Rutgers University Press
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You know that day after day of, Oh God what am I going to do with myself feeling? The fear of the emptiness that it implies keeps me going
-- Anish Kapoor -
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I've come to understand that the best one can hope for as a human is to have a relationship with that emptiness where God would be if God were available, but God isn't.
-- Anne Carson -
We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery -
We become aware of the void as we fill it.
-- Antonio PorchiaSource : "Voices". Book by Antonio Porchia, 1943.
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Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
-- Arthur EricksonSource : "Criminal Minds: Persuasion". TV Series, www.imdb.com. 2014.
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I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.
-- Ayn Rand -
If I look at my old lyrics, they seem to be full of rage, but empty. There was an emptiness in my life.
-- Billie Joe Armstrong -
Emptiness is that which frees us from religiosity and leads us to true spirituality.
-- Brother Lawrence -
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The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.
-- Bruce Lee -
In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.
-- Carl Sagan -
It is because of its emptiness that the cup is useful.
-- Carole Wilkinson -
Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.
-- Charles Spurgeon -
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London is an endless skirmish between angles and emptiness.
-- China Mieville -
Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.
-- Chogyam Trungpa -
Tell the truth about your wound, and then you will get a truthful picture of the remedy to apply to it. Don't pack whatever is easiest or most available into the emptiness. Hold out for the right medicine. You will recognize it because it makes your life stronger rather than weaker.
-- Clarissa Pinkola Estes -
Set boundaries and keep them. People will drown you with their need, and demonize you for not filling their emptiness.
-- Colleen DoranSource : Twitter post from Jun 30, 2014
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Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.
-- D.T. Suzuki -
The morning’s recollection of the emptiness of the day before. Its anticipation of the emptiness of the day to come.
-- David Markson -
We hear only our own voices, still echoes returning to our emptiness.
-- Dejan Stojanovic -
Emptiness is bound to bloom, like hundreds of grasses blossoming.
-- Dogen -
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There is no emptiness without appearance, and there is no appearance without emptiness. That is what we call the interdependent nature.
-- Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche -
We do not truly speak except at a distance. There is no word not severed.
-- Edmond JabesSource : Edmond Jabès (1993). “The Book of Margins”, p.174, University of Chicago Press
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To whom to speak when the other no longer is? The place is empty when emptiness occupies all of the place.
-- Edmond Jabes -
Being chosen doesn't come out of a state of fullness, it comes out of a state of emptiness.
-- Edward F EdingerSource : Edward F. Edinger (1992). “Transformation of the God-image: An Elucidation of Jung's Answer to Job”
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Life is full and overflowing with the new. But it is necessary to empty out the old to make room for the new to enter.
-- Eileen Caddy -
By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.
-- Ernest Hemingway -
The strongest guard is placed at the gateway to nothing. Maybe because the condition of emptiness is too shameful to be divulged.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald -
In very truth the days are almost free, and if it is another way of saying that our lives are empty, well -- there are days when emptiness is spacious, and non-existence elevating . . .
-- Florida Scott-Maxwell -
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Julia looked back at Hadassah on the bloodstained sand. A great emptiness opened within her as she looked at the still form. Gone, too, was the salt that had kept her from completely corruption.
-- Francine Rivers -
I could see that everything I had identified as really me, was not really me, but was just a pattern of strategies to avoid some kind of abyss or emptiness.
-- Gangaji -
O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth a heart of compassion!
-- Gary Snyder -
To starve a child of the spell of the story, of the canter of the poem, oral or written, is a kind of living burial. It is to immure him in emptiness.
-- George Steiner -
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There is no greater method for experiencing peace of mind and happiness than to understand and meditate on Emptiness.
-- Geshe Kelsang Gyatso -
Work is only justified by leisure time. To admit the emptiness of leisure time is to admit the impossibility of life.
-- Guy Debord -
I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.
-- Haruki Murakami -
This was the truth at the core of my existence: this yawning emptiness, scantily clad in rage. It had been there all along.
-- Hillary Jordan -
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And if a person were given all of the world and what is in it, it would not fill his emptiness.
-- Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya -
Nothingness not being nothing, nothingness being emptiness.
-- Isabelle Adjani -
I shattered that memory by going back there. Without realizing it until it was too late, I replaced that memory with the emptiness of that day.
-- J.A. Redmerski -
So all in all there wasn't anything really wrong with my life. Except that, like most everyone else's I knew about, it had a big gaping hole in it, an enormous emptiness, and I didn't know how to fill it or even know what belonged there.
-- Jack FinneySource : Jack Finney (2014). “Time and Again”, p.17, Simon and Schuster
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And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly
-- James HerriotSource : James Herriot (2012). “All Creatures Great and Small: The classic memoirs of a Yorkshire country vet”, p.187, Pan Macmillan
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The primordial purity of the ground completely transcends words, concepts, and formulations.
-- Jamgon Kongtrul -
She’s never where she is,' I said. 'She’s only inside her head.
-- Janet Fitch -
Emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves.
-- Je Tsongkhapa -
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Addiction beggins whith the hope that something 'out there' can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.
-- Jean Kilbourne -
Is it possible to be overzealous, to destroy that which you hope to save-so that nothing is left but emptiness.
-- Jerome LawrenceSource : Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee (2016). “Inherit the Wind: The Powerful Courtroom Drama in which Two Men Wage the Legal War of the Century”, p.67, Ballantine Books
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We were meant to grow. When we don't grow, we seek diversions--some harmless (if unproductive), others destructive--to fill the emptiness.
-- Jim ClemmerSource : Jim Clemmer (1999). “Growing the Distance: Timeless Principles for Personal, Career, and Family Success”, p.15, Jim Clemmer
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To be still means to empty yourself from the incessant flow of thoughts and create a state of consciousness that is open and receptive.
-- John Daido Loori -
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Where we find echoes, we generally find emptiness and hollowness; it is the contrary with the echoes of the heart.
-- John Frederick BoyesSource : John Frederick Boyes (1859). “Life and Books: Or, Records of Thought and Reading”, p.7
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A cruel critic has never made anything; his glibness is a way of inflicting his emptiness on others.
-- John LahrSource : "Questions for John Lahr". www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.
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Loneliness is emptiness, but happiness is you.
-- Johnny Cash -
It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
-- Jonathan Safran Foer -
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I realized that your mother couldn't see the emptiness, she couldn't see anything...All of the words I'd written to her over all of those years, had I never said anything to hear at all?
-- Jonathan Safran Foer -
I would hold on, and hold on, until my hands clutch at emptiness.
-- Juliet Marillier -
What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.
-- Karl Jaspers -
Don't be fooled by your emptiness, there's so much more room for happiness.
-- KaskadeSource : Song: Room for Happiness
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Change of state is not the point; recognizing the Changeless is the point, recognizing primordial Emptiness is the point, and if you are breathing and vaguely awake, that state of consciousness will do just fine.
-- Ken Wilber -
I wonder if anyone will ever know the emptiness of my life. Personal Diary -- Last entry Oh whats the point?
-- Kenneth Williams -
She'd lost her fury, somewhere, as they'd talked. She didn't feel it anymore. She wished she did, because she preferred it to the emptiness that had settled in its place.
-- Kristin Cashore -
From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness.
-- Larry McMurtry -
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A life without love, no matter how many other things we have, is an empty, meaningless one.
-- Leo Buscaglia -
The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business.
-- Lewis H. Lapham -
…it's so dreadful to have nothing to love — life is so empty — and there's nothing worse than emptiness…
-- Lucy Maud Montgomery -
No person, possession, profession, or position ever fills the cup of a wounded, empty heart. It's an emptiness only God can fill.
-- Lysa TerKeurst -
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We cannot let another person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves. We can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness.
-- M. Scott Peck -
A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.
-- Margaret Atwood -
Everybody's mainspring is different. And I want to say this - folks whose mainsprings are busted are better dead.
-- Margaret Mitchell -
I have not lost my fascination with death. I have not become a noticeably less intense person. I have not, nor will I ever, completely lose the longing for that something, that thing that I believe will fill an emptiness inside me. I do believe that the emptiness was made greater by the things that I did to myself.
-- Marya Hornbacher -
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Emptiness is not a mere emptiness, but rather fullness in which the distinctiveness of everything is throughly realized.
-- Masao AbeSource : Masao Abe, Steven Heine (2003). “Zen and the Modern World: A Third Sequel to Zen and Western Thought”, p.55, University of Hawaii Press
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the universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.
-- Matsuo Basho -
Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively.
-- Maxwell Maltz -
To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.
-- Meister Eckhart -
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Plenty of people are onto the emptiness but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
-- Michael Shannon -
Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.
-- Michelangelo Antonioni -
It’s hard to grieve in a town where everything that happens is God’s will. It’s hard to know what to do with your emptiness when you’re not supposed to have emptiness.
-- Miriam Toews -
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Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers.
-- Nathalia CraneSource : Nathalia Crane (1925). “Lava Lane, and Other Poems”
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One's condition on ***** is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one's being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness - the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.
-- Norman Mailer -
There is no wilderness. There is only our inability to fill the emptiness in which we live ...
-- Octavian Paler -
She was tired, with that tiredness that only emptiness brings.
-- Paolo Giordano -
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I felt totally myself, nothing like the emptiness and horrible feeling I had then [pulling out the Olympics] - no dizziness.
-- Paula Radcliffe -
I get lost, sometimes. Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart.
-- Peter GabrielSource : Song: In Your Eyes
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All silence is. All emptiness. And now: The dawn.
-- Ray Bradbury -
Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.
-- Richard J. FosterSource : Richard J. Foster (1995*). “Richard Foster's treasury of Christian discipline”, Jossey-Bass
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Self-emptiness prepares us for spiritual fullness.
-- Richard Sibbes -
Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
-- Richard Yates -
The beginning of love is a horror of emptiness.
-- Robert Bly -
There's a hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music.... When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits where your spirit should....
-- Rumi -
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All the little emptiness of love!
-- Rupert BrookeSource : New Numbers no. 4 (1914) "Peace"
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The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness.
-- Sam ShepardSource : "Sam Shepard opens up". interview with Carole Cadwalladr, www.theguardian.com. March 20, 2010.
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Pain is always preferable to numbness.
-- Scott AndersonSource : Scott Anderson (1999). “Triage: A Novel”, p.179, Simon and Schuster
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The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.
-- Seneca the Elder -