Selected emptiness quotes

1. The living blind and seeing Dead together lie As if in love . . . There was no more hating then, And no more love; Gone is the heart of Man.

2. An empty man is full of himself.

3. I'm completely uninhabited.

4. Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?

5. It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.

6. Souls will be unable to reach perfection who do not strive to be content with having nothing, in such fashion that their natural and spiritual desire is satisfied with emptiness; for this is necessary in order to reach the highest tranquility and peace of spirit. Hence the love of God in the pure and simple soul is almost continually in act.

7. 'Life has become the ideology of its own absence.'

8. 'Life has changed into a timeless succession of shocks, interspaced with empty, paralysed intervals. '

9. I feel like one, Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed!

10. One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

11. There's a vacancy, won't you come to me And fill my empty spaces I'm a motel man in a promised land That's filled with empty faces So won't you bring your sorrows bring your dreams, It's a place for you to be There's no more tomorrow or that's how it seems Won't you come to me? I've got a vacancy

12. No, vertigo is somethng other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is thedesire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

13. In every man's heart there is an emptiness that only God can fill with his son Jesus Christ.

14. The house was a rambling affair. It had few windows, and such as there were did not open, were unbreakable and admitted no light. Darkness lay everywhere; illumination from an invisible source followed one's entry into a room - the black had to be entered before it faded. Every room was furnished, but with odd pieces that bore little relation to each other, as if there was no purpose for the room. Rooms equipped for purposeless beings have that air about them.

15. He's a hollow man. He believes in anything. Hollow men are vulnerable to anyone who offers them something that might fill the void and make them feel less empty.

16. When you're as hollow as Enoch Kane, the emptiness aches. He's desperate to fill it, but he doesn't have the patience or the commitment to fill it with anything worthwhile: So a man like Kane obsesses on one thing after another - sex, money, food, power, drugs, alcohol - anything that seems to give meaning to his days, but that requires no real self-discovery or self-sacrifice.

17. Bored in a role, but he can't stop Standing up to sit back down, and lose the one thing found. Spinning the world like a toy top 'till there's a ghost in every town.

18. Nevertheless the flames did die down -- whether exhausted from lack of supplies or choked by excessive feeding. Little by little, love was quenched by absence; regret was smothered by routine; and the fiery glow that had reddened her pale sky grew gray and gradually vanished. . . . But the storm kept raging, her passion burned itself to ashes, no help was forthcoming, no new sun rose to the horizon. Night closed in completely around her, and she was left alone in a horrible void of piercing cold.

19. I hold a cup of wisdom, But there is nothing within.

20. Then he thought, is my life so empty that this is the best thing I can think of to think about?

21. Next morning, when the golden sunne was risen, And new had bid good morrow to the mountaines; When night her silver light had lockt in prison, Which gave a glimmering on the christall fountaines: Then ended sleepe, and then my cares began, Ev'n with the uprising of the silver swan. Oh, glorious sunne! quoth I, viewing the sunne, That lightenst everie thing but me alone: Why is my summer season almost done, My spring-time past, and ages autumne gone? My harvest's come, and yet I reapt no corne: My love is great, and yet I am forlorne.

22. And weave fine cobwebs, fit for skull That's empty when the moon is full; Such as take lodgings in a head That's to be let unfurnished.

23. This Light inspires, and plays upon The nose of Saint like Bag-pipe drone, And speaks through hollow empty Soul, As through a Trunk, or whisp'ring hole, Such language as no mortal Ear But spiritual Eve-droppers can hear.

24. Seem'd washing his hands with invisible soap In imperceptible water.

25. She has turned her face, more than once, to the Outer Radiance and simply seen nothing there. And so each time taken a little more of the Zero into herself. It comes down to courage, at worst an amount of self-deluding that's vanishingly small: he has to admire it, even if he can't accept her glassy wastes, her appeals to a day not of wrath but of final indifference....

26. A daily dose of eMpTyV Will flush your mind right down the drain Shannon Hoon and Kurt Cobain, Make yourself a household name

27. ''Lord Chancellor, did I deliver the speech well ?' 'Very well indeed, sir,' was the enthusiastic answer. 'I am glad of that,' replied the king; 'for there was nothing in it.''

28. We find ourselves like a hollow glass globe, from whose vacancy a voice speaks.

29. Now I do as I please And I lie through my teeth Someone might get hurt But it won't be me I should probably feel cheap But I just feel free Or a little bit empty.

30. Don't you get an empty feeling in your soul when you have a blank to-do list?

31. There are those that even God exploits, and they are prophets and saints in the vacuousness of the world.

32. The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.

33. They call Him Emptiness who is the Truth of truths, in Whom all truths are stored! There within Him creation goes forward, which is beyond all philosophy; for philosophy cannot attain to Him: There is an endless world, O my Brother! and there is the Nameless Being, of whom naught can be said. Only he knows it who has reached that region: it is other than all that is heard and said. No form, no body, no length, no breadth is seen there: how can I tell you that which it is?

34. We're drinking and we're dancing but there's nothing really happening. The place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night.

35. The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.

36. Why hast thou nothing in thy face? Thou idol of the human race, Thou tyrant of the human heart, The flower of lovely youth that art.

37. So the great affair is over/ but whoever would have guessed/ it would leave us all so vacant/ and so deeply unimpressed/ It's like our visit to the moon/ or to that other star/ I guess you go for nothing/ if you really want to go that far