Emptiness Quotes - Page 19

• You will never know the fullness of Christ until you know the emptiness of everything but Christ.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Christ, Fullness, Knows

  449 Copy quote

• The primordial purity of the ground completely transcends words, concepts, and formulations.

  Jamgon Kongtrul

  Purity, Concepts

  9 Copy quote

• Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. For instance, if what we're feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves.

  Pema Chodron

  Buddhist, Pain, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• The past is only an unreliable memory held in the present. The future is only a projection of our present conceptions. The present itself vanishes as soon as we try to grasp it. So why bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?

  Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

  Memories, Past, Trying

  90 Copy quote

• Ideas are easy to come by, they spring effortlessly out of the vacuity of the mind and cost nothing. When they are held and projected onto one's self or others they become a project. When the project is enacted it becomes the work, and when the work is completed it appears to be self-existent. Creation is the process of form manifesting from emptiness, where that which arises from the mind comes into existence. Yet the distance between conception and realisation may be enormous, as vast as the distance between the stars.

  Robert Beer

  Stars, Spring, Work

  7 Copy quote

• Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged - people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can't. Everything is deeply intertwingled.

  Ted Nelson

  People, Pretending

  10 Copy quote

• And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

  T. S. Eliot

  Voice, Singing, Exhausted

  T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.697, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A vessel is formed from a lump of clay with care, however, it is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful.

  Laozi

  Space, Clay, Care

  9 Copy quote

• If you go searching for the Great Creator, you will come back empty-handed. The source of the universe is ultimately unknowable, a great invisible river flowing forever through a vast and fertile valley. Silent and uncreated, it creates all things.

  Laozi

  Rivers, Forever, Valleys

  Laozi, Brian Browne Walker (1992). “Hua Hu Ching: Teachings of Lao Tzu”

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• We put thirty spokes to make a wheel: But it is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges. We make a vessel from a lump of clay; But it is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful. We make doors and windows for a room; But it is the empty spaces that make the room livable. Thus, while existence has advantages, It is the emptiness that makes it useful.

  Laozi

  Doors, Space, Clay

  6 Copy quote

• 'THIS ROOM HAS MYSTERY LIKE A TRANCE' This room has mystery like a trance Of wine ; forget-me-nots of you Are chair and couch, the books your Fingers touched. And now that you Are absent here the silence scrapes A secret rust from everything; While sudden wreaths of sorrow's Dust uncover emptiness like halls To stumble through, and terror falls

  Kenneth Patchen

  Book, Fall, Wine

  Kenneth Patchen (1968). “The Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen”, p.112, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mind remains undetermined in the great Void. Here the highest knowledge is unbounded. That which gives things their thusness cannot be delimited by things. So when we speak of 'limits', we remain confined to limited things. The limit of the unlimited is called 'fullness.' The limitlessness of the limited is called 'emptiness.' Tao is the source of both. But it is itself neither fullness nor emptiness

  Zhuangzi

  Giving, Mind, Void

  30 Copy quote

• The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Ice, Sky

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.319, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you are so full that there is no emptiness in you, that you have started feeling the significance of the ordinary, day-to-day existence, when moment to moment you live totally, intensely, passionately, then God is available.

  Rajneesh

  Ordinary Days, Feelings, Celebration

  4 Copy quote

• His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.

  Barack Obama

  Inspiring, Powerful, Moral Leadership

  Statement on the death of Vaclav Havel, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. December 18, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now the Apostle, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says, "Knowledge inflates: but love edifies." The only correct inerpretation of this saying is that knowledge is valuable when charity informs it. Without charity, knowledge inflates; that is, it exalts man to an arrogance which is nothing but a kind of windy emptiness.

  Saint Augustine

  Inspiration, Men, Arrogance

  5 Copy quote

• Like an enemy I knew as intimately as any friend, I came to know the nagging, constant emptiness of the incongruent life. I ignored myself and lived for people, purposes, and goals that weren't my own. I betrayed who I was and instead accepted a fictional substitute that was defined from the outside in.

  Phil McGraw

  People, Goal, Expectations

  Dr. Phil McGraw (2003). “Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside Out”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.

  Karl Jaspers

  Fear, Faces, Filled

  51 Copy quote

• When everyone is trying to be something, be nothing. Range with emptiness. Human should be like a pot. As the pot is hold by its emptiness inside, human is hold by the awareness of his nothingness.

  Shams Tabrizi

  Trying, Awareness, Pot

  285 Copy quote

• It is time that we allow the Word of God, not the glamorized lies of Hollywood to become the cornerstone of our convictions, thoughts, and attitude. It is time we trade the emptiness of pop culture entertainment for the real-life adventure of a Christ-built existence. Only then will truth reign and rule in our lives. Only then will our lives make an eternal impact for His glory.

  Leslie Ludy

  Attitude, Lying, Real

  12 Copy quote

• My Father... He was there when I didn't understand, he was there when I was wrong, he was there when I cried, he was there when I lied. For some reason my dad was always there, when I needed him the most. His love was never ending. And now that he's gone there is an emptiness in my world, but not in my heart.

  Michael Jordan

  Dad, Father, Heart

  11 Copy quote

• We live in an era when established values are no longer valid, when prodigious discoveries are being made every year, when catastrophes of unbelievable proportions occur weekly. In ancient Greek the word “chaos” means “gaping void” or “yawning emptiness.” The most effective response to the chaos in our lives is the creation of new forms of literature, music, poetry, art and cinema.

  Werner Herzog

  Art, Mean, Yawning

  10 Copy quote

• The here-and-now mountain
  is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
  blown off into emptiness.

  Rumi

  Mountain, Pieces, Tiny

  Rumi (2014). “'Another city'. a selectionf of poems from the Persian”, p.44, Lulu.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think probably one of the important things that happened to me was growing up in Idaho in the mountains, in the woods, and having a very strong presence of the wilderness around me. That never felt like emptiness. It always felt like presence.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Strong, Growing Up, Thinking

  "Marilynne Robinson Extended Interview". Interview with Bob Abernethy, www.pbs.org. September 18, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest crisis of our lives is neither economic, intellectual, nor even what we usually call religious. It is a crisis of imagination. We get stuck on our paths because we are unable to reimagine our lives differently from what they are right now. We hold on desperately to the status quo, afraid that if we let go, we will be swept away by the torrential undercurrents of our emptiness.

  Marc Gafni

  Letting Go, Religious, Imagination

  FaceBook post by Marc Gafni from Aug 26, 2015

  8 Copy quote

  Show source