Emptiness Quotes - Page 14

• The animal tends to eat with his stomach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is never sure when to stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratification.

  Alan Watts

  Animal, Men, Brain

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• Youth is the season of tragedy and despair. Youth is the time when one's whole life is entangled in a web of identity, in a perpetual maze of seeking and of finding, of passion and of disillusion, of vague longings and of nameless griefs, of pity that is a blade in the heart, and of 'all the little emptiness of love.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Grief, Passion, Heart

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• The emptiness was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops running.

  Willa Cather

  Running, Silence, Intense

  Willa Cather (1998). “Obscure Destinies”, p.29, U of Nebraska Press

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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. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

  George Orwell

  Moving, Men, Thinking

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944”

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• I been through living for years. I just ain't dead yet.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Years

  Zora Neale Hurston (1995). “Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories: Jonah's Gourd Vine / Their Eyes Were Watching God / Moses, Man of the Mountain / Seraph on the Suwanee / Selected Stories”

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• Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust.

  Samuel Johnson

  Impatient, Neglect, Possession

  Samuel Johnson (1761). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes”, p.230

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• The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Empty, Loud, Insignificant

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• Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehoods, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Death, Gold, Facts

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2001). “The House of the Seven Gables”, p.367, Applewood Books

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• I begin where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures.

  Alexander Pope

  Ambition, People, Pleasure

  Alexander Pope (1853). “The poetical works of Alexander Pope”, p.73

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• Everybody's mainspring is different. And I want to say this - folks whose mainsprings are busted are better dead.

  Margaret Mitchell

  Different, Want, Busted

  Margaret Mitchell (2016). “Gone with the Wind”, p.460, Hamilton Books

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• Once a month I wake in the night, slippery with terror. I'm afraid, not because there's someone in the room, in the dark, in the bed, but because there isn't. I'm afraid of the emptiness, which lies beside me like a corpse.

  Margaret Atwood

  Lying, Dark, Night

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Wilderness Tips”, p.189, Anchor

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• ... when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes, just flat and uninvolved.

  Tim O'Brien

  Eye, Kissing, Numbness

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.11, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.

  Agnes Repplier

  Lying, Drinking, Men

  Agnes Repplier (1891). “Points of View”, Boston Houghton, Mifflin 1893.

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• Confidence without skill is just emptiness.

  Erik Weihenmayer

  Skills

  Source: www.afb.org

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• A lot of my work is helping people to find their own life's purpose and then follow it. I find that when people are not working on their life's purpose there is a sense of emptiness and anxiety.

  Doreen Virtue

  People, Anxiety, Purpose

  "Doreen Virtue: the oil spill". Interview with Susan Gregg, www.beliefnet.com.

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• Desire is insatiable not because the goods of the world are too few, too uniform, or too bland. Desire burns through the goods of the world, even though these goods are not false or intrinsically unsatisfactory.... Desire shatters the economy of things; it disputes the tyranny of objects. IT longs for the great emptiness, which is beauty and love without limitation.

  Wendy Farley

  Beauty And Love, Desire, Uniforms

  Wendy Farley (2005). “The Wounding and Healing of Desire: Weaving Heaven and Earth”, p.13, Westminster John Knox Press

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• It was like the part of me that had enjoyed those friends had evaporated, leaving behind a huge, echoing emptiness, and I was scrabbling on the edge of it, trying not to fall into the hole within myself because I was terrified to find out how far down it went.

  Robyn

  Fall, Leaving, Trying

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• 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.

  Aaron Huey

  Thinking, Taste, Mouths

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• I looked into the vast dome of blue emptiness that stretched out above me in all directions and the illusion was still there, the size and speed, and what information they were sending to mother earth.

  Nelson Mandela

  Mother, Blue, Earth

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• In very truth the days are almost free, and if it is another way of saying that our lives are empty, well -- there are days when emptiness is spacious, and non-existence elevating . . .

  Florida Scott-Maxwell

  Way, Empty, Existence

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• all nothing's only our hugest home;
  the most who die, the more we live

  e. e. cummings

  Home, Dies

  E. E. Cummings (1994). “Selected Poems”, p.13, W. W. Norton & Company

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• History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
  A thousand and one remains a thousand,
  as though the one had never existed:
  an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
  ...
  emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
  nobody's place in line.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Running, War, Garden

  Wislawa Szymborska, “Hunger Camp At Jaslo”

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• Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.

  Sherry Turkle

  Loneliness, Emotional, Self

  Sherry Turkle (1985). “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit”, Touchstone Books

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• If a person realized that everything people call happiness, love and joy was just a miscalculation based on a false premise, he'd feel a horrible emptiness inside. The only thing that could rouse him from his paralysis would be to gamble with his own face and the face of others. The person capable of that would be permitted anything.

  Vladimir Bartol

  People, Joy, Would Be

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• I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning. These past thirty days, I have spent many of my moments lost in that void. And I know that many future moments will be consumed by the vast emptiness as well. But when I can, I want to choose life and meaning.

  Sheryl Sandberg

  Heart, Past, Thinking

  "Sheryl Sandberg Offers Grieving Guidance, Calls for Support Systems After Husband's Death" by Ashley Lee, www.hollywoodreporter.com. June 3, 2015.

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