Hollowness Quotes

• No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

  Alan Watts

  Inspirational, Fear, Heart

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.79, Souvenir Press

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• The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.

  Paul Wellstone

  Democracies Have, Ideas, Hypocrisy

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• In fact, I am aware of the fake entities in my life.
  I know that I can clear them if I wanted to in a moment.
  But all this hollowness Needs my Sincerity.

  Rumi

  Fake, Needs, Facts

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• Something is missing: that's as close as I can come to naming the sensation, an awareness of missed or thwarted connections, or of a great hollowness left where something lovely and solid used to be. ...There is something fundamentally insatiable about being human, as though we come into the world with a kind of built-in tension between the experience of being hungry, which is a condition of striving and yearning, and the experience of being fed, which may offer temporary satisfaction but always gives way to new strivings, new yearnings.

  Caroline Knapp

  Giving, Missing, Lovely

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• Unlawful pleasure, trenching on another's rights, is delusive and envenomed pleasure—its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave forever.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Rights, Forever, Poison

  1857 The Professor, ch.20.

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• There's a hollowness to civilized life. It doesn't appeal to people, and some people react with extreme violence.

  John Zerzan

  People, Violence, Appeals

  "'We don't know what's going to happen. If we say we're doomed, we are, full stop.' A Q&A with John Zerzan and Zander Sherman". logger.believermag.com. December 4, 2015.

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• Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain and regret and need and hollowness and a feeling as close to anger as I will ever be able to manage.

  Colm Toibin

  Pain, Regret, Attachment

  "The Empty Family: Stories". Book by Colm Toibin, October 1, 2010.

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• Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

  Abdul Kalam

  Congratulations, Heart, Half

  Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, Arun Tiwari (1999). “Wings of Fire: An Autobiography”, p.45, Universities Press

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• The hollowness was in his arms and the world was snowing.

  William Goldman

  Inspirational, Snow, World

  William Goldman (2013). “The Princess Bride”, p.111, A&C Black

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• Moralists love to discourse on the hollowness of success; about the hollowness of failure they are silent.

  Mason Cooley

  Success, Silent, Discourse

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• I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Girl

  The Great Gatsby ch. 1 (1925)

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• All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Love, Wall, Home

  Thomas Wolfe (1999). “Of Time and the River: A Legend of Man's Hunger in His Youth”, p.344, Simon and Schuster

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• What do you think love is - a thing to startle from the heart like a bird at every shout or blow? You can fly from me, high as you choose into your darkness, but you will see me always beneath you, no matter how far away, with my face turned to you. My heart is in your heart. I gave it to you with my name that night and you are its guardian, to treasure it, or let it whither and die. I do not understand you. I am angry with you. I am hurt and helpless, but nothing will fill the ache of the hollowness in me where your name would echo if I lost you.

  Patricia A. McKillip

  Hurt, Heart, Love Is

  "The Forgotten Beasts of Eld". Book by Patricia A. McKillip, 1974.

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• I think you can tell, when you meet someone, whether they read novels or not. There is some little hollowness if they don't.

  Philip Hensher

  Thinking, Novel, Ifs

  "Philip Hensher: a life in writing" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. March 30, 2012.

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• I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare, with its churches and chicaneries, its books and blackguardisms, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath and, above all, its sanctified shopkeeping!

  Swami Vivekananda

  Dream, Hate, Book

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.2027, Manonmani Publishers

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• But how awful would that be? How terrible to live surrounded by the stark, sharp, hollowness of things that simply were enough?

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Life, Awful, Enough

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• Clay is fashioned into vessels; it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends. Doors and windows are cut out to make a dwelling, and on the empty space within, its use depends. Thus, while the existence of things may be good, it is the non-existence in them that makes them serviceable.

  Laozi

  Cutting, Dwelling, Space

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• Is there not a terrible hollowness, mockery, want, craving, in that existence which is given away to others, for want of something of your own to bestow it on?

  Charlotte Bronte

  Want, Given, Existence

  Charlotte Bronte (2009). “Shirley: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.267, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• There was something intrinsically sad about Shinjuku. A vacuum-packed hollowness that no quantity of neon could hide. Roppongi was the same, only there the sadness was older and more Western. All that movement to so little purpose. A million strangers searching for a cure to the darkness behind their eyes in the void between someone else's legs.

  Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Sadness, Eye, Darkness

  Jon Courtenay Grimwood (2017). “End Of The World Blues”, p.92, Hachette UK

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• I would enjoy experiencing the hollowness of success at first- hand.

  Mason Cooley

  Success, Hands, Firsts

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• Except I think it feels more like an empty stomach than a broken heart. An aching hollowness that food can't cure. You know. You've felt it yourself, I bet. You hurt all the time, you're restless, you can't think straight, you sort of wish you were dead but what you really want is for everything to be the same as it was when you were still with her.. or him

  Richard Laymon

  Hurt, Heart, Thinking

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• The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  World, Worship, Imitation

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• It was going to be a long, dark night but not quite as dark as it was in the abyss of his heart where there was nothing but hollowness, yet it felt heavy, almost as if someone still resided there.

  Faraaz Kazi

  True Love, Heart, Dark

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• The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

  Alan Watts

  Motivational, Change, Moving On

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

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• How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Faith, Eye

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are". Book by Alan Watts, 1966.

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