Emptiness Quotes - Page 28

• The creative person finds himself in a state of turmoil, restlessness, emptiness, and unbearable frustration unless he expresses his inner life in some creative way.

  Silvano Arieti

  Frustration, Creative, Unbearable

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• Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Spiritual, Loneliness, People

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• The true opponent in a debate on emptiness is your own ego.

  Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

  Inspirational Life, Ego, Opponents

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• But what was there to say? Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief. Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.

  Arundhati Roy

  Grief, Night, Law

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• Weight loss does not make people happy. Or peaceful. Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or weight or name. Even a wildly successful diet is a colossal failure because inside the new body is the same sinking heart.

  Geneen Roth

  Heart, Successful, Loss

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• It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Life, Feelings, Empty

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.37, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Life, Nice, Numbness

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.140, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• One wants to be loved, in lack thereof admired, in lack thereof feared, in lack thereof loathed and despised. One wants to instill some sort of emotion in people. The soul trembles before emptiness and desires contact at any price.

  Hjalmar Söderberg

  People, Soul, Desire

  61 Copy quote

• Let your tears fall because of sin; but, at the same time, let the eye of faith steadily behold the Son of man lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, that those who are bitten by the old serpent may look unto Jesus and live. Our sinnership is that emptiness into which the Lord pours his mercy.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Jesus, Fall, Eye

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• Addiction is the dominant form of a culture that suffers from a superficial spectacle and celebrity-connectivity at its center. It's a form of spiritual emptiness.

  Cornel West

  Spiritual, Addiction, Suffering

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• Throughout history there have been many men and women who have chosen to imitate Jesus as he withdraws into the desert... To pass time in the desert means to create a little emptiness and silence around us, to rediscover the road to our heart, to remove ourselves from the noise and external distractions, to enter into contact with the deepest source of our being and our faith.

  Raniero Cantalamessa

  Faith, Jesus, Inspiration

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• An artist has to go to every extreme, to stretch his sensibility through excess and suffering in order to feel and to communicate more. I have always been fascinated by blood. Pain can be vitalizing; it gives intensity in the place of vagueness and emptiness. If we don't suffer, how do we know that we live?

  Sebastian Horsley

  Pain, Artist, Blood

  "Horsley's cross is a painful one to bare" by Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• 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

  Spirit, Satan, Drink

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• O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth a heart of compassion!

  Gary Snyder

  Heart, Compassion, Awareness

  Gary Snyder (2009). “Mountains and Rivers Without End: Poem”, p.151, Counterpoint

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• It wasn't only that you didn't see him anymore, meet him anymore. You saw his absence and encountered it as something tangible. His not being there was like the sharply outlined emptiness of a photo with a figure cut out precisely with scissors and now the missing figure is more important, more dominant than all others.

  Pascal Mercier

  Cutting, Missing, Important

  Pascal Mercier (2008). “Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel”, p.157, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• What’s life in this nation? Collect emptiness in a household of cornflakes. Transient fuel gobbles attention, the television aches, the truth walks. Scheme worms welcome your corpse, trap clicks and you’re in heaven, bored rigid

  Steve Aylett

  Bored, Heaven, Attention

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• The longest journey
  Is the journey inwards.
  Of him who has chosen his destiny,
  Who has started upon his quest
  For the source of his being.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Past, Journey, Destiny

  "Markings". Book by Dag Hammarskjold, 1964.

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• I am an emptiness for Thee to fill; my soul a cavern for Thy sea

  George MacDonald

  Sea, Soul, Caverns

  George MacDonald (1893). “The Poetical Works of George MacDonald (Volumes I and II)”, p.10, Library of Alexandria

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• About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.

  Carl Jung

  Suffering, Neurosis, Mental Health

  "Modern Man in Search of a Soul".

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• The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought. That's what we're going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought. I can say that with great confidence. Emptiness is not what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or fear. Compassion––not what we thought. Love. Buddha nature. Courage. These are code words for things we don't know in our minds, but any of us could experience them. These are words that point to what life really is when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.

  Pema Chodron

  Fall, Compassion, Mind

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• Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Looks

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• God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him that I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere.

  Thomas Merton

  Voice, Able, Spirituality

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.37, New Directions Publishing

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• The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old?

  Stewart O'Nan

  Acceptance, Romance, Midwest

  Stewart O'Nan (2008). “Songs for the Missing: A Novel”, p.12, Penguin

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• I thought this man had long ago drained everything from my heart. But now something strong and bitter flowed and made me feel another emptiness in a place I didn't know was there. I cursed this man aloud so he could hear. You had dog eyes. You jumped and followed whoever called you. Now you chase your own tail.

  Amy Tan

  Dog, Strong, Eye

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• How fascinating is death, the extinction of life. One moment here and the next gone. The light put out and only the empty bag of the body left.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Life, Death, Light

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