Vacant Quotes - Page 3

• A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their abode in its desolate apartments.

  George Stillman Hillard

  Art, Temptation, Mind

  George Stillman Hillard (1854). “Six Months in Italy”, p.121

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• Excessive golfing dwarfs the intellect. Nor is this to be wondered at when you consider that the more fatuously vacant the mind is, the better for play. It has been observed that absolute idiots play the steadiest.

  Charles Walter Simpson

  Golf, Play, Mind

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• As a kid, I played my share of football in the street or in a vacant lot.

  Barry Sanders

  Football, Kids, Nfl

  "Barry Sanders: 'Mr. 99'". Interview with Jon Robinson, www.espn.com. July 31, 2009.

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• Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close,
  Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
  There as I passed, with careless steps and slow,
  The mingling notes came soften'd from below;
  The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
  The sober herd that low'd to meet their young;
  The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
  The playful children just let loose from school;
  The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind,
  And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind;
  These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
  And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Dog, Sweet, Children

  Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted VILLage”

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• It is the ignorant and childish part of mankind that is the fighting part. Idle and vacant minds want excitement

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fighting, Ignorant, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2972, Delphi Classics

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• How often are the beauties of nature unheeded by man, who, musing on past ills, brooding over the possible calamities of the future, building castles in the air, or wrapped up in his own self-love and self-importance, forgets to look abroad, or looks with a vacant stare.

  Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps

  Men, Past, Air

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• I saw the long line of the vacant shore, The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand, And the brown rocks left bare on every hand, As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Weed, Rocks, Hands

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.930, Delphi Classics

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• You can't legitimately kick on income tax, for it's on what you have made. You have already made it. But, look at land, farms, homes, stores, vacant lots. You pay year after year on them whether you make it or not.

  Will Rogers

  Home, Land, Years

  Will Rogers (1979). “Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams: The Hoover years, 1931-1933”, Will Rogers Heritage Trust

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• Sometimes I'd like everybody who is stuck, or lost, or vacant to stay that way and keep silent for as long as it takes, but that's the critic in me talking.

  David Toop

  Talking, Long, Way

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• The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.

  John Steinbeck

  Eye, Sound, Ribs

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.8, Penguin

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• Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom, why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beauty, Dream, Art

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1871). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete in One Volume”, p.366

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• ISIS is a formidable foe, but the counter forces to it have only just begun and if these forces, the Iraqi army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, American air power, the Syrian Free Army, work in a coordinated fashion, it will start losing ground. Also, please keep in mind that ISIS does not actually hold as much ground as the many maps flashed on television keep showing. Large parts of those territories that ISIS supposedly controls are vacant desert.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Fashion, Army, Air

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• Why is it that the less intelligence people have, the more spiritual they are? They seem to fill all the vacant, ignorant spaces in their heads with soul. Which explains how it is that the less knowledge they have, the more religion.

  Lincoln Steffens

  Spiritual, Space, People

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• Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb/I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from/Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer/It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

  Bob Dylan

  Prayer, Dark, Nerves

  "Song: "Not Dark Yet" ("Time Out of Mind")". 1997.

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• Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Girl, Passion, Heart

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.256

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• So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed, It would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed, It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star, I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

  Leonard Cohen

  Stars, Moon, Infidelity

  Song: Death Of A Ladies' Man, Album: Death of a Ladies' Man, 1977

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• A regime, an established order, is rarely overthrown by a revolutionary movement; usually a regime collapses of its own weakness and corruption and then a revolutionary movement enters among the ruins and takes over the powers that have become vacant.

  Walter Lippmann

  Order, Weakness, Movement

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.503, Harvard University Press

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• One hundred and fifty years ago the vacant lands of the West were opened to private use. One hundred years ago the Congress passed the Homestead Act, probably the single greatest stimulus to national development ever enacted. Under the impetus of that Act and other laws, more than 1.1 billion acres of the original public main have been transferred to private and non-federal public ownership. The 768 million acres remaining in federal ownership are a valuable national asset.

  John F. Kennedy

  Years, Law, Land

  "John F. Kennedy: 1961 : containing the public messages, speeches, and statements of the president, January 20 to December 31, 1961" by John F. Kennedy, Washington: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1962.

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• While obsession with one’s personal appearance is a sign of being a vacant prat, total oblivion to it is a sign of mental illness.

  Kate Cann

  Mental Illness, Obsession, Oblivion

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• There are no vacant lots in nature.

  Edward Abbey

  Nature

  Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.146, University of Arizona Press

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• i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots

  Saul Williams

  Air, Wings, Shoes

  Saul Williams (2012). “She”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• When we meditate, what we actually do is enter into a vacant, calm, still, silent mind. We go deep within and approach our true existence, which is our soul. When we live in the soul, we feel that we are actually meditating spontaneously

  Sri Chinmoy

  Meditation, Soul, Mind

  Sri Chinmoy (2015). “Beyond Within: A Philosophy for the Inner Life”, p.264, Aum Publications

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• Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and planted it, so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing, but it may spread into a prodigious timber.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Kindness, Pockets, Cost

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• Our attempt at focusing must give way to the vacant all-embracing stare

  Anton Ehrenzweig

  Giving, Way, Staring

  Anton Ehrenzweig (1967). “The Hidden Order of Art: A Study in the Psychology of Artistic Imagination”, p.67, Univ of California Press

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• At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - relief or despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking - 'wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant!

  Gareth Roberts

  Mean, Thinking, Two

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