Emptiness Quotes - Page 29

• One of the manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will. And I thereby lose my ability to focus. I don't think I'll ever have the day-to-day consistency in my performance that something like This American Life has. If I'm not depressed and I'm on and I can focus and I can think through something hard and without interruption and without existential emptiness that comes from depression, that gives me - not mania. But I exalt. I exalt in not being depressed.

  Rachel Maddow

  Thinking, Giving, Focus

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• True compassion is undirected & holds no conceptual focus. That kind of genuine, true compassion is only possible after realizing emptiness.

  Tsoknyi Rinpoche

  Compassion, Focus, Mindfulness

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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

  Gone, Salt, Corruption

  Francine Rivers (2012). “A Voice in the Wind”, p.495, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

  Galway Kinnell

  Memories, Love Is, Hands

  Galway Kinnell (2001). “A New Selected Poems”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And just for a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, wiht a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. - Sal Paradise

  Jack Kerouac

  Moving, Fall, Angel

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• Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.

  Richard J. Foster

  Loneliness, Solitude, Fulfillment

  Richard J. Foster (1995*). “Richard Foster's treasury of Christian discipline”, Jossey-Bass

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• A life without love, no matter how many other things we have, is an empty, meaningless one.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Matter, Empty, Life Without Love

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• "It pleases the Father that ALL fulness" should be there; and therefore there is nothing but emptiness anywhere else.

  William Gadsby

  Christian, Jesus, Father

  "Sermons, fragments of sermons and letters". ed. by J. Gadsby,

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• Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

  Frank Herbert

  Suffering, Purpose, Empires

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Dune Messiah”, p.49, Penguin

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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

  Buddhist, Appearance

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• If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Passion, Dark, Men

  Soren Kierkegaard (2005). “Fear and Trembling”, p.18, Penguin UK

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• There is an unseen sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness. We are lutes. When the sound box is filled, no music can come forth. When the brain and the belly burn from fasting, every moment a new song rises out of the fire. The mists clear, and a new vitality makes you spring up the steps before you . . .

  Rumi

  Song, Spring, Fire

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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 Ripley

  Past, Maybe Tomorrow, Yesterday

  Alexandra Ripley (1992). “Scarlett: the sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the wind”, Macmillan Reference USA

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• I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.

  Jack Kerouac

  Dream, Wisdom, Morning

  Jack Kerouac (2011). “On the Road”, p.289, Penguin UK

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• The more space and emptiness you can create in yourself, then you can let the rest of the world come in and fill you up.

  Jeff Bridges

  Space, World

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• 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

  Existentialism, Praying, Immortality

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• In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Country, Names, Together

  Jeffrey Eugenides (1993). “The Virgin Suicides: A Novel”, p.241, Macmillan

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• Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache... Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

  George Orwell

  Men, Thinking, Perfection

  "Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun". Tribune, December 20, 1943.

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• When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Children, Heart

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• Huizi would say, never look back to the past. Never regret. Even if there is emptiness ahead, never look back.

  Xiaolu Guo

  Regret, Past, Looks

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• You must know nothing before you can learn something, and be empty before you can be filled. Is not the emptiness of the bowl what makes it useful? As for laws, a parrot can repeat them word for word. Their spirit is something else again. As for governing, one must first be lowest before being highest.

  Lloyd Alexander

  Law, Firsts, Spirit

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• A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.

  Margaret Atwood

  Crush, Home, Heavy

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Tent”, p.25, Anchor

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• The gift moves towards the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns towards him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Social nature abhors a vacuum.

  Lewis Hyde

  Moving, Circles, Generosity

  Lewis Hyde (2009). “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World”, p.29, Vintage

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• In Japan we have the phrase, "Shoshin," which means "beginner's mind." Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Mean, Japan, Empty Mind

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• Self-emptiness prepares us for spiritual fullness.

  Richard Sibbes

  Spiritual, Self, Fullness

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