Emptiness Quotes - Page 15

• It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.

  Iain Banks

  Civilization, Might, Kind

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• The purpose of architecture is to transmute the emptiness into space, that is into something which our minds can grasp as an organized unity.

  El Lissitzky

  Space, Unity, Mind

  "El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts". Book edited by Sophie Lissitzky-Kuppers, 1968.

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• I knew that to find and to feel Yoav again would be terribly painful, because of what had become of him, and because of what I knew he could ignite in me, a vitality that was excruciating because like a flare it lit up the emptiness inside me and exposed what I always secretly knew about myself: how much time I'd spent being only partly alive, and how easily I'd accepted a lesser life.

  Nicole Krauss

  Vitality, Would Be, Alive

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• But for the present I would lie there and know I didn't have to get up, and feel the holy emptiness and blessed fatigue of a saint after the dark night of the soul. For God and Nothing have a lot in common. You look either one of Them straight in the eye for a second and the immediate effect on the human constitution is the same.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Lying, Blessed, Eye

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.150, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Fidgeting and boredom are the symptoms of fear of emptiness, which we try to fill up with whatever we can lay our hands on.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  Hands, Boredom, Trying

  Stephen Nachmanovitch (1991). “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art”, p.130, Penguin

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• Man is in pursuit of two goals: he is looking for happinesse and, being by essence empty ("étant vide par essence", Fr.), he is trying to fill (or take up, - "remplir", Fr.) his life; the latter reason play a more considerable role than we ordinarily think. What we take for vainglory, ambition, love of power and riches (or wealth), is often, indeed, a need to mask this emptiness, a need to let one's hair down (or to live it up), to put oneself on a false scent or trail. (de se donner le change", Fr.)

  African Spir

  Ambition, Men, Thinking

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 56), 1937.

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• It is to our lack of proper content ("notre manque de contenu propre:;», Fr.), of our inner emptiness that we need occupations and distractions, otherwise ("faute de quoi", Fr.) we experience boredom, which is nothing elses than the feeling of unease that take hold of us when our spirit is not absorbed by the mirages of life.

  African Spir

  Boredom, Feelings, Needs

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• Let us protect our children; and let us not allow them to grow up into emptiness and nothingness, to the avoidance of good hard work, to introspection and analysis without deeds, or to mechanical actions without thought and consideration. Let us steer them away from the harmful chase after material things and the damaging passion for distractions... Let us educate them to stand with their feet rooted in God's earth, but with their heads reaching even into heaven, there to behold truth.

  Friedrich Frobel

  Children, Growing Up, Hard Work

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• In this glare of brilliant emptiness, in this arid intensity of pure heat, in the heart of a weird solitude, great silence and grand desolution, all things recede to distrances out of reach, relecting light but impossible to touch, annihilating all thought and all that men have made to a spasm of whirling dust far out on the golden desert.

  Edward Abbey

  Heart, Men, Dust

  Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert solitaire: a season in the wilderness”

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• Men and women in their mutual attraction are driven to the very emptiness they are trying to avoid.

  Subhash Kak

  Men, Mutual Attraction, Trying

  "Recursionism and Reality". Book by Subhash Kak, 2002.

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• Having fallen from the eternal, the Evil One's desires are endless, insatiable. Having fallen from pure Being, he is driven by the desire to possess, to fill his emptiness. But the problem is insoluble, always. He is compelled to have and to hold, to possess and consume, and nothing else. All he takes, he destroys.

  Denis de Rougemont

  Evil, Desire, Investing

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• Now the windows, blinded by the glare of the empty square, had fallen asleep. The balconies declared their emptiness to heaven; the open doorways smelt of coolness and wine.

  Bruno Schulz

  Summer, Wine, Squares

  Bruno Schulz, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Goldfarb (2008). “The street of crocodiles and other stories”, Penguin Classics

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• When you realize your own emptiness, that will be something, won't it?

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Realizing

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• You will reach a point where you can finally go for an hour, or a day, or a week without painful reminders of absence and emptiness. Look for new awakenings. Be open to rebirth.

  Karen Katafiasz

  Grieving, Looks, Awakening

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• Adolescents swing from euphoric self-confidence and a kind of narcissistic strength in which they feel invulnerable and even immortal, to despair, self-emptiness, self-deprecation. At the same time they seem to see an emerging self that is unique and wonderful, they suffer an intense envy which tears narcissism into shreds, and makes other people's qualities hit them like an attack of lasers.

  Terri E Apter

  Self Confidence, Unique, Swings

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• One ought to love society, if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Loneliness, Solitude, Wish

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• Society seldom forgives those who have discovered the emptiness of its pleasures, and who can live independent of it and them.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Independent, Forgiving, Pleasure

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• There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness.

  Rumi

  Stomach, Sweetness

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• I felt a kind of numbness, an enervation, but more particularly an odd fragility - as if my body had actually become frail, hypersensitive and somehow disjointed and clumsy, lacking normal coordination. And soon I was in the throes of a pervasive hypochondria.

  William Styron

  Numbness, Body, Normal

  William Styron (1990). “Darkness visible: a memoir of madness”, Random House Incorporated

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• I'm up all night against my will My medicine won't let me feel anything at all The doctor gave me sleeping pills and I took one Then I feel all alone, sleeping like a stone.

  Joseph Arthur

  Sleep, Night, Numbness

  Song: Your Are The Dark, Album: Redemption's Son, 2002

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• He'd been numb a long time, years. All his nights down Ninsei, his nights with Linda, numb in bed and numb at the cold sweating center of every drug deal. But now he'd found this warm thing, this chip of murder. Meat, some part of him said. It's the meat talking, ignore it.

  William Gibson

  Night, Numbness, Talking

  William Gibson (2000). “Neuromancer”, p.130, Penguin

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• I am feeling fine. I remember these words and recite them. These are the things you say when asked how you are. After all, it would be odd to say: I'm not feeling. Or, more to the point: I'm not, I have ceased to be. Where am I?

  Marya Hornbacher

  Numbness, Feelings, Would Be

  Marya Hornbacher (2009). “Madness: A Bipolar Life”, p.198, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Winning intoxicates you, and numbs you to the sufferings of others.

  Margaret Atwood

  Winning, Numbness, Suffering Of Others

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “The Robber Bride”, p.256, Anchor

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• She began to feel like the plastic doll she had been named after, without even a hole where her mouth was supposed to be.

  Francesca Lia Block

  Numbness, Mouths, Dolls

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• The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.

  Carson McCullers

  Hurt, Heart, Numbness

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.119, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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