Empty Words Quotes

• Women know the way to rear up children (to be just). They know a simple, merry, tender knack of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, and stringing pretty words that make no sense. And kissing full sense into empty words.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Mom, Mother, Baby

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1871). “Poetical Works”, p.321

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• Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as to a treasure, and not squander on our way through life in the small coin of empty words, or in exact and priggish argument.

  George Sand

  Life, Intellectual, Flipping A Coin

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• And empty words are evil.

  Homer

  Evil, Empty

  Homer (1998). “The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation”, p.190, Macmillan

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• Empty words show an empty mind, and silence speaks most eloquently of all.

  Tanya Huff

  Empty Mind, Silence, Speak

  Tanya Huff (2012). “The Fire’s Stone”, p.134, Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

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• Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.

  Homer

  Communication, Wind, Literature

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• Empty words almost echo within themselves

  Cecelia Ahern

  Echoes, Empty

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• An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating “blah.” It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action.

  Paulo Freire

  Commitment, Reality, Reflection

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• You always have a choice. Don't ever imagine you don't. Whatever you do, it's a decision and you have to accept responsibility for it. That's when honor becomes more than empty words.

  Lynn Flewelling

  Responsibility, Choices, Decision

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• Promises are empty words if you're not keeping them.

  Mike Ditka

  Promise, Empty, Ifs

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• Only people who have been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to.

  Haruki Murakami

  Hurt, Pain, Men

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• Freedom is the fundamental character of the will, as weight is of matter... That which is free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Character, Liberty, Fundamentals

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• There is no such thing as an empty word, only one that is worn out yet remains full.

  Martin Heidegger

  Empty, Worn, Remains

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• I hate pretty. It’s a very empty word. It gives a bad name to beauty.

  Oscar de la Renta

  Hate, Names, Giving

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• Graves they say are warm'd by glory;
  Foolish words and empty story.

  Heinrich Heine

  Stories, Glory, Foolish

  Heinrich Heine (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Heinrich Heine (Illustrated)”, p.787, Delphi Classics

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• We are working for a revolution. If we do not start it by improving the life of the soldiers, all slogans of reforming and improving society are but empty words.

  Chiang Kai-shek

  Soldier, Revolution, Empty

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• Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words--"friend" and "real" and "story" and "change"--words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some, like "identity" and "search" and "cloud," had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had "American" become an ironic term? How had "democracy" come to be used in an arch, mocking way?

  Jennifer Egan

  Stars, Real, Book

  Jennifer Egan (2010). “A Visit from the Goon Squad”, p.262, Anchor

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• You must learn to follow privately the Lord's bidding: not to speak empty words, not to adorn yourself, always to obey authority, not to look at a woman with desire, not to be angry and much else.

  Tito Colliander

  Desire, Bidding, Looks

  Tito Colliander (1982). “Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth”, p.19, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

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• Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the person of no importance, since every piece of logical reasoning is offensive.

  Stendhal

  Logical Reasoning, Pieces, Offensive

  Stendhal (2016). “The Red and the Black”, p.191, Xist Publishing

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• Vain empty words / Of honour, glory and immortal fame, / Can these recall the spirit from its place, / Or re-inspire the breathless clay with life? / What tho' your fame with all its thousand trumpets, / Sound o'er the sepulchres, will that awake / The sleeping dead.

  George Sewell

  Sleep, Inspire, Clay

  George Sewell (1719). “The Tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh: As it is Acted at the Theatre in Lincolns-Inn-Fields”, p.12

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• One can't help thinking, Daddy, what a colourless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman- whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge- is fundamentally and always interested in clothes.

  Jean Webster

  Baby, Plato, Husband

  Jean Webster (2002). “Daddy-Long-Legs”, p.97, Courier Corporation

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• Immortality is a ridiculous illusion, an empty word, a butterfly net chasing the wind.

  Milan Kundera

  Butterfly, Wind, Ridiculous

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• To-morrow it seemLike the empty words of a dreamRemembered on waking.

  Robert Bridges

  Waking, Empty, Morrow

  Robert Bridges (1912). “Poetical Works Of Robert Brides Excluding The Eight Dramas”

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