Emptiness Quotes

Once I knew only darkness and stillness ...
my life was without past or future ...
but a little word from the fingers of another
fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness,
and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.
- Helen Keller

Life is empty and meaningless
because life is empty and meaningless.
- Werner Erhard

The nature of life is to be
a study of contrasts: joy/sadness, full/empty.
The Main Thing is to Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing.
- Stephen Covey

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow...
but only empties today of its strength.
- C. H. Spurgeon

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Rumi (Persian poet 1207-1273)

One cannot have a mind that is empty of all thoughts,
but one can have a mind that is content with
whatever thoughts fill it at the moment.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan

An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
- Albert Einstein

Overflowing Cup of Tea:
The Zen Master poured his visitor's teacup full, and then kept pouring.
The visitor watched until he could no longer restrain himself.
"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," the Zen Master said,
"you are full of your own opinions and assumptions.
How can you learn truth until you first empty your cup?"
- Traditional Zen Koan

When we talk about democracy, if the people's
stomach is empty, democracy is also empty.
Democracy can not be installed by fiat;
it must be achieved by the people themselves.
- Jimmy Yen

Nothing echoes like an empty mailbox.
- Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts

If a man empties his purse into his head,
no man can take it away from him.
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
- Benjamin Franklin

Love is like an hourglass,
with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
- Jules Renard

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden

Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him find it within himself.
- Galileo Galilei

Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen

No man is free who is not master of himself.
- Epictetus

It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus

There are other measures of self-respect for a man,
than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

One man with courage makes a majority.
- old saying probably repeated by Andrew Jackson
(falsely attributed to Jefferson)

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man
are fixed upon the same creation;
but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.
- Albert Pike

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks-
if we agree with him.
- Mark Twain

A man can succeed at almost anything
for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.
- Charles M. Schwab

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
- Abraham Lincoln

Many a man fails as an original thinker
simply because his memory is too good.
- Nietzsche

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
- The Buddha

All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)

If a man loses pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden

The gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man perfected without trials.
- Confucius

Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis
of man's desire to understand.
- Neil Armstrong

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted,
but beholds it as something
unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
- Albert Schweitzer

A man should look for what is,
and not for what he thinks should be.
- Albert Einstein

Before you criticize a man,
walk a mile in his shoes.
- Anonymous

Non-violence means avoiding not only external physical violence
but also internal violence of spirit.
You not only refuse to shoot a man,
but you refuse to hate him.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A wise man hears one word and understands two.
- Yiddish Proverb

You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
- Oscar Wilde

A man who as a physical being
is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and
discovers that the source is within him.
- Soren Kierkegaard

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me,
that man with all his noble qualities...
still bears in his bodily frame
the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
- Charles Darwin

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing,
and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
- George Bernard Shaw

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
- The Bible

The ultimate test of a man's conscience
may be his willingness to sacrifice something today
for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
- Gaylord Nelson

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
- B. C. Forbes

The wise man looks back into the past,
and does not grieve over what is far off,
nor rejoice over what is near;
for he knows that time is without end.
- Lao Tzu

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a man does his best, what else is there?
- George S. Patton

The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion
to his commitment to excellence,
regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi

Man becomes great exactly in the degree
in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Man must evolve for all human conflict,
a method which rejects
revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth,
and if a man does not know what a thing is,
it is at least an increase in knowledge
if he knows what it is not.
- Carl Jung

A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
- George Savile

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal
of plain living and high thinking
the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants.
Man's happiness really lies in contentment.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Take a chance! All life is a chance.
The man who goes farthest is generally
the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie

All this worldly wisdom was once
the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
- Henry David Thoreau

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
- Naguib Mahfouz

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie