Empty Quotes - Page 27

• Even the most solid of things, and the most real, the best-loved and the well-known, are only hand shadows on the wall. Empty space and points of light.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Wall, Real, Light

  Jeanette Winterson (1991). “Sexing the Cherry”, Vintage

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• The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Military, Causes, Wallets

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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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• Although the Christian is thus free from all works, he ought in this liberty to empty himself, take upon himself the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in human form, and to serve, help and in every way deal with his neighbor as he sees that God through Christ has dealt and still deals with him.

  Martin Luther

  Christian, Men, Liberty

  Martin Luther (2011). “Martin Luther: Selections From His Writing”, p.75, Anchor

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• For should your hands drop white and empty
  All the toys of the world would break.

  John Frederick Nims

  Hands, White, World

  John Frederick Nims (1944). “Selected Poems”, p.5, University of Chicago Press

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• I want to be really special, I want to be really good. It's not enough to be famous for me. Famous is empty so quickly, it's not what people think it is. It's wonderful, but if you're famous and you feel that you're an artist inside and everyone thinks you're just a celebrity, it's really painful.

  Cher

  Artist, Thinking, People

  "New Again: Cher". Interview with Bob Colacello and Andy Warhol, www.interviewmagazine.com. June 12, 2013.

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• Success is empty if you arrive at the finish line alone.

  Howard Schultz

  Lines, Finish Line, Ifs

  Howard Schultz, Dori Jones Yang (1997). “Pour your heart into it: how Starbucks built a company one cup at a time”

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• I am trying to awake the energy contained in the air. These are the main sources of energy. What is considered as empty space is just a manifestation of matter that is not awakened.

  Nikola Tesla

  Air, Space, Trying

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• As desire recedes, the world becomes clear, pale, and empty.

  Mason Cooley

  Desire, World, Pale

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• When your tongue can taste shadows and your friends are shedding tears,
  That's when you know that hell is empty 'cos all the devils are here.

  Kate Tempest

  Shadow, Tears, Devil

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• Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,--not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,--and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Sleep, Eye

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.621, Delphi Classics

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• Silent waters rocking on the morning of our birth,
  like an empty cradle waiting to be filled.
  And from the heart of God the Spirit moved upon the earth,
  like a mother breathing life into her child.

  Gordon Lightfoot

  Mother, Morning, Children

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• Contrary to all we hear about women and their empty-nest problem, it may be fathers more often than mothers who are pained by thechildren's imminent or actual departure--fathers who want to hold back the clock, to keep the children in the home for just a little longer. Repeatedly women compare their own relief to their husband's distress

  Lillian B. Rubin

  Mother, Children, Husband

  Lillian B. Rubin (1981). “Women of a certain age: the midlife search for self”, Harpercollins

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• The intimate coupling of two men or two women is not marriage. It is a pale and misshapen counterfeit that will only serve to empty marriage of its meaning and destroy the institution that is the keystone in the arch of civilization... Marriage is the sine qua non for healthy children and a stable society. It is 'fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race.'

  D. James Kennedy

  Children, Men, Race

  "Kennedy Calls for Constitutional 'Firewall' to Protect Marriage". Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, November 19, 2003.

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• I am obsessed by the idea of silence. I went through an entire library studying art, artists and their critics, philosophers, too, on the meaning and significance of the color white. I dreamed of white birds and white bears. I thought about the white pages of my mother's journals. I became enthralled with John Cage and his work, 4'33”, his masterpiece of ambient sound. Rauschenberg, too. And then at some point I let go. What sticks to the soul is what gets placed on the page. Maybe that's the unknown part, the mystery, the power of the empty page.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Letting Go, Mother, Art

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• One of the functions of thought is to be occupied all the time with something. Most of us want to have our minds continually occupied so that we are prevented from seeing ourselves as we actually are. We are afraid to be empty. We are afraid to look at our fears.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Time, Fear, Mind

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2013). “On Fear”, p.9, Harper Collins

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• The trouble with taxonomic boxes is... that that they tend to be empty, however beautiful they are on the outside.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Beautiful, Trouble, Boxes

  Kenneth E. Boulding (2017). “Illustrating Economics: Beasts, Ballads and Aphorisms”, p.75, Routledge

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• The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

  W. H. Auden

  Dirty, Writing, Islands

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Writing"), (p. 22), 1962.

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• The tomb of the Saviour was a narrow and empty vault, precious only for its memories of the supreme tragedy of the centuries, but the new continent was to be the home and temple of the living God.

  Chauncey Depew

  Memories, Home, Tragedy

  Chauncey Mitchell Depew (1902). “The Library of Oratory: Ancient and Modern, with Critical Studies of the World's Great Orators by Eminent Essayists”

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• Most full lives are filled with empty gestures.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Gestures, Filled, Full Life

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• The cup of joy is heaviest when empty.

  Margaret of Valois

  Joy, Cups

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• Indolent people, whatever taste they may have for society, seek eagerly for pleasure, and find nothing. They have an empty head and seared hearts.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Heart, People, May

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• There's only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivionorself-contempt. That's calmly to turn away from everything, to say, "Enough!" and, folding one's useless arms across one's empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one's own insignificance.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Fall, Self, Pieces

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• my present Profession is Physick - Now, when my Pockets are full, I cure a Patient in three Days; when they are empty, I keep him three Months.

  Susanna Centlivre

  Doctors, Three, Months

  Susanna Centlivre (1872). “The wonder. The man bewitch'd. Gotham election. Wife well managed. Bickerstaff's burial. Bold stroke for a wife. Artifice”, p.97

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• Archie was an expert at dividing the affairs of life into men's business and women's business. An empty cupboard and a full plate were the man's business, a full cupboard and an empty plate the concern of the woman.

  Annie Proulx

  Men, Experts, Affair

  Annie Proulx (2008). “The Shipping News: A Novel”, p.320, Simon and Schuster

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