Empty Quotes - Page 14

• You're just an empty cage girl, if you kill the bird.

  Tori Amos

  Girl, Bird, Cages

  Song: Crucify, Album: Little Earthquakes, 1992

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• One man watches a river flow by. If he does not wish it to flow, to change ceaselessly in accord with its nature, he will suffer great pain. Another man understands that nature of the river is to change constantly, regardless of his likes and dislikes, and therefore he does not suffer. To know existence as this flow, empty of lasting pleasure, void of self, is to find that which is stable and free of suffering, to find true peace in the world.

  Ajahn Chah

  Pain, Men, Self

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• Please DO waste art materials. Use paper. Empty paint jars. Deplete pens. if it's teaching you stuff, it's not being wasted.

  Danny Gregory

  Art, Teaching, Use

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• A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.

  Roger Zelazny

  Song, Book, Fire

  Roger Zelazny (1989). “Frost and Fire”, William Morrow

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• I know from experience that to one who thinks much and feels deeply, it often seems that he has only to put down his thoughts and feelings in order to produce something altogether out of the common; yet as soon as he sets to work he falls into a certain mannerism of style and common phraseology; his thoughts do not come spontaneously, and one might almost say that it is not the mind that directs the pen, but the pen leads the mind into common, empty artificiality.

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Fall, Thinking, Order

  Henryk Sienkiewicz (1897). “Without Dogma: A Novel of Modern Poland”

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• I'm wearing black leggings and a loose top festooned with a Menger sponge of empty pockets stitched out of smaller pockets and smaller still, almost down to the limits of visibility woven in freefall by hordes of tiny otaku spiders, I'm told, their genes programmed by an obsessive-compulsive sartorial topologist.

  Charles Stross

  Wearing Black, Pockets, Obsessive Compulsive

  Charles Stross (2010). “Glasshouse”, p.26, Hachette UK

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• The cold blast at the casement beats;The window-panes are white;The snow whirls through the empty streets;It is a dreary night!

  Epes Sargent

  Night, Window Panes, White

  Epes Sargent (1849). “Songs of the sea, with other poems”, p.119

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• My biggest fear is expending the best and most exciting energy in sketches, no matter how quickly executed. I often need to empty the rubbish bin several times before regaining the fresh quality of the initial exploratory sketches.

  Catherine Stock

  Quality, Energy, Needs

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• Imagine a revised edition of Shakespeare... a big, thick book with an elegant cover... You open it and find that there are no pages, just an empty box of space. On the back wall of the box is a small mirror. You look into it, see yourself, and now you know all you need to know about Shakespeare.

  Carter Ratcliff

  Wall, Book, Mirrors

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• The vestiges of the bicameral mind do not exist in any empty psychological space.

  Julian Jaynes

  Space, Mind, Psychological

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.365, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There's not much benefit in attacking an empty house.

  Eiji Yoshikawa

  House, Benefits, Attacking

  Eiji Yoshikawa (2000). “Taiko: An Epic Novel of War and Glory in Feudal Japan”, p.391, Kodansha International

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• And once I knew a meditative rose That never raised its head from bowing down, Yet drew its inspiration from the stars. It bloomed and faded here beside the road, And, being a poet, wrote on empty air With fragrance all the beauty of its soul.

  Henry Abbey

  Stars, Inspiration, Air

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• Home is a place in the mind. When it is empty, it frets. It is fretful with memory, faces and places and times gone by. Beloved images rise up in disobedience and make a mirror for emptiness.

  Maeve Brennan

  Memories, Home, Mirrors

  Maeve Brennan (2015). “The Visitor”, p.8, Counterpoint

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• Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.

  Khalil Gibran

  Heart, Hands, Soul

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open a woman's hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.

  Aravind Adiga

  Dark, Hands, Eggs

  Aravind Adiga (2008). “The White Tiger”, p.81, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• When you realize yourself as completely empty and devoid of all form... this is wisdom, When you realize yourself as the fullness of love overflowing itself without object... this is bliss, And when you are aware of yourself incarnate in the appearance of form... this is leela.

  Eli Jaxon-Bear

  Realizing, Bliss, Appearance

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• Accursed, blasted, heartless things [books]! Full of empty promises, full of false lures, always making you hungry, never satisfying you, never!

  Cornelia Funke

  Book, Heartless, Promise

  Cornelia Funke (2011). “Inkspell”, p.703, Scholastic Inc.

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• It's essential that we learn how to defend the Bible and the Christian faith for our sake and our children's. If we don't, the empty and obsolete churches in England will foreshadow the future in America.

  Ken Ham

  Christian, Children, America

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• The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation you can make of it what you will

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Paper, Canvas, Sheets

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• Christianity can be described as a theological materialism: It is that which transforms our material existence.  If our faith does not throw us into the arms of the world, if it does not lead to our experience of responsibility, love, celebration, and our commitment to transformation, then, whatever we call it, we have nothing but an empty shell.

  Peter Rollins

  Commitment, Responsibility, Doe

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• Sadhana is a search for what to give up. Empty yourself completely.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Giving Up, Giving

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• Every November, during the certain holiday people love so much, people take a dead turkey, open up the dead turkey’s ass, or carve out a really big hole in their ass, take some stuffing and shove it inside their dead empty ass, and use the little dead ass as an oven to bake some bread. Somebody else’s dead empty bacteria-laden ass to make bread? Ass bread?! And people think vegans are weird? Because we eat tofu? And rice, and beans, and lentils?

  Gary Yourofsky

  Holiday, Thinking, Turkeys

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• A life without an objective is much like a ship at sea with no port in mind. It drifts with the waves or storms, or with the whim of the captain. They are tempted to ask, amidst the battles of life, "Is the struggle worth-while?" That attitude lessens the joy of living. They who say that there is no purpose in life are not unhappy, but become dangerous to themselves and others, for they have no safe guide for their actions. Indeed, life has not objective save physical satisfactions, it is empty and valueless.

  John Andreas Widtsoe

  Attitude, Struggle, Sea

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• [On Christianity:] Its lip-service and its empty rites have made it the easiest of all tasks for the usurer to cloak his cruelties, the miser to hide his avarice, the lawyer to condone his lies, the sinner of all social sins to purchase the social immunity from them by outward deference to churches.

  Ouida

  Lying, Hypocrisy, Religion

  Ouida (1896). “Views and Opinions”

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• Words, living and ghostly, the quick and the dead, crowd and jostle the otherwise too empty corridors of my mind ... To move among this bright, strange, often fabulous herd of beings, to summon them at my will, to fasten them on to paper like flies, that they may decorate it, this is the pleasure of writing.

  Rose Macaulay

  Moving, Writing, Mind

  Rose Macaulay (2011). “Personal Pleasures”, p.148, A&C Black

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