Vacant Quotes - Page 4

• What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Horse, Voice, Bars

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• Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Men, Forever, Energy

  Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2333, Delphi Classics

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• It's dark out, Jack, the stations out there don't identify themselves, we're in it raw-blind like burned rats, it's running out all around us, the footprints of the beast, one nobody has any notion of. The white and vacant eyes of something above there, something that doesn't know we exist. I smell heartbreak up there, Jack, a heartbreak at the center of things, and in which we don't figure at all.

  Kenneth Patchen

  Running, Eye, Dark

  Kenneth Patchen (2008). “We Meet”, p.167, New Directions Publishing

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• And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hands, staring down at his enemy's shell.

  J. K. Rowling

  Eye, Hands, Skills

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• I was an empty shell. Like a vacant house―condemned―for months I'd been utterly uninhabitable. Now I was a little improved. The front room was in better repair. But that was all―just the one small piece. He deserved better than that―better than a one-room, falling-down fixer-upper. No amount of investment on his part could put me back in working order.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Fall, Order, House

  "New Moon". Book by Stephenie Meyer, September 6, 2006.

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• I'm from Kansas, so there were a lot of vacant lots and open fields to tackle each other in so we could avoid tackling each other on the street. But running on the street and trying not to get taken down on the concrete, that will make you fast, that's for sure.

  Barry Sanders

  Running, Taken, Kansas

  "Barry Sanders: "Mr. 99"". Interview with Jon Robinson, www.espn.com. July 31, 2009.

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• Look at Charlie Brown's face. Would you please hold still a minute Charlie Brown? I want Linus to study your face. Now this is what you call a failure face, Linus. Notice how it has failure written all over it. Study it carefully Linus. You rarely see such a good example. Notice the deep lines, the dull vacant look in the eyes. Yes, I would say this is one of the finest examples of a failure face that your liable to see for a long while.

  Charles M. Schulz

  Eye, Long, Dull

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• A Loud Laugh Bespeaks a Vacant Mind!

  William Shakespeare

  Laughing, Mind, Loud

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• Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One Beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

  Flann O'Brien

  Book, Eye, Expression

  Flann O'Brien (2000). “At Swim-two-birds”, p.5, Penguin UK

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• A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Thinking, Errors, Ideas

  Ann Radcliffe (1795). “The Mysteries of Udolfo: A Romance Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry”, p.15

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• I remember when each 4th lot was vacant and overgrown, and the landlord only go this rent when you had it, and each day was clear and good and each moment was full of promise.

  Charles Bukowski

  Promise, Each Day, Remember

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• Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to bepainted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,--these eat up the hours.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Heart, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.63, Courier Corporation

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• And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Common, Grain, Wells

  'In Memoriam A. H. H.' (1850) canto 6

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• I never hear parents exclaim impatiently, "Children, you must no make so much noise," that I do not think how soon the time may come when, beside the vacant seat, those parents would give all the world, could they hear once more the ringing laughter which once so disturbed them.

  Abbott Eliot Kittredge

  Laughter, Children, Thinking

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• I think everyone spins. You would just be an empty vacant shell reporting facts. I mean, you have your life that you bring with you to every moment that happens.

  Rosie O'Donnell

  Mean, Thinking, Shells

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Truth, Space

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.28, University of Virginia Press

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• She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.

  John Steinbeck

  Dream, Memories, Believe

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.29, Penguin

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• Everything outside was elegant and savage and fleshy. Everything inside was slow and cool and vacant. It seemed a shame to stay inside.

  John Cheever

  Savages, Shame, Elegant

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• The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.

  Alan Greenspan

  Home, House, Spurs

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• The sun to me is dark And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

  John Milton

  Dark, Moon, Night

  'Samson Agonistes' (1671) l. 86

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• I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known by my vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace nor with any settled purpose. I walk about; not to and from.

  Charles Lamb

  Retirement, Garden, Purpose

  Charles Lamb (1835). “Essays of Elia [both series]; to which are added, Letters, and Rosamund, a tale”, p.218

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• I remember New York in the '80s as a place with vacant lots that would eventually give over to nature. Weeds would grow up, squirrels would move in. That entropy is gone now. It's too expensive to let a vacant lot go natural.

  Moby

  Weed, New York, Growing Up

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• The only measures that count are progress over your own self, and triumph over the vacant abstractions that most people mistake for thinking.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Mistake, Thinking

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• Men have died in torture chambers, on the stake, in concentration camps, in front of firing squads, rather than renounce their convictions. The appeaser renounces his under the pressure of a frown on a vacant face.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Squad, Pressure

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.113, Penguin

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• Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.  Everything has to be filled in, it seems-appointment books, hillsides, vacant lots-but when all the spaces are filled, the Loneliness really begins.  Then the Groups are joined, the Classes are signed up for, and the Gift-to-Yourself items are bought.  When the Loneliness starts creeping in the door, the Television Set is turned on to make it go away.  But it doesn't go away.  So some of us do instead, and after discarding the emptiness of the Big Congested Mess, we discover the fullness of Nothing.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Loneliness, Book, Class

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