Emptiness Quotes - page 2

Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities. (D. T. Suzuki)
To starve a child of the spell of the story, of the canter of the poem, oral or written, is a kind of living burial. It is to immure him in emptiness. View quote
George Steiner
Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. View quote
Kahlil Gibran
It seems to me that all of the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, and psychic emptiness, but all of that is inevitable when you become accustomed to living at others' expense. View quote
Anton Chekhov
All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake. View quote
Shunryu Suzuki
Idleness is emptiness the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless. View quote
Hosea Ballou
In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part. View quote
Paul Tillich
The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business. View quote
Lewis H. Lapham
Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity. View quote
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Men and women in their mutual attraction are driven to the very emptiness they are trying to avoid. View quote
Subhash Kak
The strongest guard is placed at the gateway to nothing. Maybe because the condition of emptiness is too shameful to be divulged. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness. View quote
Richard Yates
The beginning of love is a horror of emptiness. View quote
Robert Bly
The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness. View quote
Sam Shepard
The uniqueness of zazen lies in this: that the mind is freed from bondage to all thought forms, visions, objects, and imaginings, however sacred or elevating, and brought to a state of absolute emptiness, from which alone it may one day perceive its own true nature, or the nature of the universe. View quote
Philip Kapleau
True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed. View quote
Jack Kornfield
We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
For the first time, she did want more. She did not know what she wanted, knew that it was dangerous and that she should rest content with what she had, but she knew an emptiness deep inside her, which began to ache. View quote
Iain Pears
I think that's what finally stopped me. I slid right to the edge. My legs were hanging over. And I could feel it too. I don't know how. There was no wind, no sound, no change of temperature. There was just this terrible emptiness reaching up for me. View quote
Mark Z. Danielewski
I want to tell you what it was really like to think death is imminent, but I can't. It's a taste in your mouth. And an emptiness. View quote
Aaron Huey
Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within. (Arthur Erickson)
What I was trying to convey there was the kind of waste land that was left after the war. It was a bit like one always thinks of war, you know, stark scenery and no birds, no trees, no leaves, nothing living. And just emptiness. View quote
George Martin
It's a great excuse and luxury, having a job and blaming it for your inability to do your own art. When you don't have to work, you are left with the horror of facing your own lack of imagination and your own emptiness. A devastating possibility when finally time is your own. View quote
Julian Schnabel
I think about that "empty" space a lot. That emptiness is what allows for something to actually evolve in a natural way. I've had to learn that over the years - because one of the traps of being an artist is to always want to be creating, always wanting to produce. View quote
Meredith Monk
It's often difficult for those who are lucky enough to have never experienced what true depression is to imagine a life of complete hopelessness, emptiness and fear. View quote
Susan Polis Schutz