Vacancy Quotes

• you can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces.

  John Kennedy Toole

  Government, Space, People

  A Confederacy of Dunces (published 1980), ch.9, pt.1.

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• History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody's own vacancy

  Robert Smithson

  Museums, May, Abstract

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.41, Univ of California Press

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• Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.

  Samuel Johnson

  Calm, Gloomy, Idle

  Samuel Johnson (2014). “The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Volume I: 1731-1772”, p.238, Princeton University Press

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• True inward quietness is not that which may be produced by shutting out all outward causes of distraction -- a process which, when carried out too severely, may intensify the inward ferment of the mind, especially in the young. It is rather a state of stable equilibrium; it is not vacancy, but stability -- the steadfastness of a single purpose.

  Caroline Emelia Stephen

  Mind, Inward, Purpose

  Caroline Emelia Stephen (1908). “Light Arising: Thoughts on the Central Radiance”

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• A face peered. All the grey night In chaos of vacancy shone; Nought but vast Sorrow was there The sweet cheat gone.

  Walter de La Mare

  Sweet, Night, Sorrow

  'The Ghost' (1918)

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• Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have a something to lay hold of - and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system.... The heart must have something to cling to.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Heart, Mind, Void

  Thomas Chalmers (1855). “Sermons: Select Works”, p.250

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• The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  People, Imagination, Secret

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2014). “Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus”, p.24, First Avenue Editions

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• I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager. . .and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that. . .

  Ntozake Shange

  Teenager, Writing, Thinking

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• Action is transitory, a step, a blow,
  The motion of a muscle, this way or that,
  'Tis done--And in the after-vacancy,
  We wonder at ourselves, like men betrayed.

  William Wordsworth

  Betrayal, Blow, Men

  'The Borderers' (1842) act 3, l. 1539

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• If the mind is wearied by study, or the body worn with sickness, It is well to lie fallow for a while, in the vacancy of sheer amusement; But when thou prosprest in health, and thine intellect can soar untired, To seek uninstructive pleasure is to slumber on the couch of indolence.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Lying, Mind, Slumber

  "Proverbial Philosophy (Of Recreation)". Book by Martin Farquhar Tupper, 1839.

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• It is well to lie fallow for a while.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Lying, Advice, Leisure

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1849). “Poetical works”, p.71

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• All my life, as down an abyss without a bottom. I have been pouring van loads of information into that vacancy of oblivion I call my mind.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Life, Mind, Pouring

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• Not Chaos, not the darkest pit of lowest Erebus, nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out by help of dreams - can breed such fear and awe as fall upon us often when we look into our Minds, into the Mind of Man.

  William Wordsworth

  Dream, Fall, Men

  1814 'The Excursion', preface, l.35-41.

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• Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.

  Horace Mann

  Ignorance, Soul, Ignorant

  Horace Mann (1867). “Thoughts”, p.143

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• How cold the vacancy
  When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist
  First sees reality. The mortal no
  Has its emptiness and tragic expirations.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Gone, Phantoms

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.331, Vintage

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• True inward quietness ... is not vacancy, but stability - the steadfastness of a single purpose.

  Caroline Emelia Stephen

  Inner Peace, Inward, Purpose

  Caroline Emelia Stephen (1908). “Light Arising: Thoughts on the Central Radiance”

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• If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.

  Samuel Johnson

  Kindness, Stupid, Apathy

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.223

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• The infinity of this vacancy, the pervasive pain, the longing for some spirit, some lightness, some joy - that's all that is left.

  Martha Manning

  Pain, Joy, Infinity

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• There's a vacancy, won't you come to me And fill my empty spaces I'm a motel man in a promised land That's filled with empty faces So won't you bring your sorrows bring your dreams, It's a place for you to be There's no more tomorrow or that's how it seems Won't you come to me? I've got a vacancy

  Harry Chapin

  Dream, Men, Land

  Song: Vacancy, 1974

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• I couldn't have thought of her more. Even vacancy was crowded with her.

  Graham Greene

  Crowded

  Graham Greene (1951). “The End of the Affair”, London Heinemann [1951]

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• When you marry your mistress, you create a job vacancy.

  James Goldsmith

  Love, Funny, Marriage

  "Marital fidelity? What a terribly common idea" by Emma Soames, www.theguardian.com. July 17, 2010.

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• If he could only see how small a vacancy his death would leave, the proud man would think less of the place he occupies in his lifetime.

  Ernest Legouve

  Pride, Men, Thinking

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• A man who marries his mistress leaves a vacancy in that position.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Mistress, Position

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• No one stands on the top of the world. Not you, not me, not even gods. But the unbearable vacancy of the throne in the sky is over. From now on... I will be sitting on it.

  Tite Kubo

  Sky, Bleach, Sitting

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• As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Goodbye, Farewell, Love Is

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