Being Empty Quotes & Sayings

I start to feel like an empty canvas under the hands of Michelangelo. No! Like a swimmer who's gone out to far in the ocean being pulled back to shore by a fashion lifeguard. — Alecia Whitaker

People are angry that things as common sense as securing the border and eliminating sanctuary cities are being framed as extreme views. They are tired of empty rhetoric without action, and they are hungry for a leader from outside the professional political class. — Carly Fiorina

Even in childhood I watched the hours flow, independent of any reference, any action, any event, the disjunction of time from what was not itself, its autonomous existence, its special status, its empire, its tyranny. I remember quite clearly that afternoon when, for the first time, confronting the empty universe, I was no more than a passage of moments reluctant to go on playing their proper parts. Time was coming unstuck from being - at my expense. — Emil M. Cioran

At the core of love is validation. It is what gives love power.
For when love is given away, validation seeps in and expands in the heart of the recipient, filling up every empty, dark corner. It is a wonderful, light, consuming feeling we long for, and once found, we hope - even expect - it will forever remain. But there are times when that most precious love is revoked, and a hard scab forms over the empty hole. Though this scab is both healing and protective, it is the reason why validation from future love may not seep in so easily, no matter how wanting the heart. — Richelle E. Goodrich

There were times when he confronted his own image as a man confronts an empty valley, and the vision propelled him forward again to experience as despair compels us to extinction. Sometimes he was like a man in flight, but running toward the enemy, desperate to feel upon his vanishing body the blows that would prove his being; desperate to imprint upon his sad conformity the mark of real purpose, desperate perhaps, as Leclerc had hinted, to abdicate his conscience in order to discover God. — John Le Carre

I love the stillness of a room, after a party. The chairs are moved, the cushions disarranged, everything is there to show that people enjoyed themselves; and one comes back to the empty room happy that it's over, happy to relax and say, 'Now we are alone again. — Daphne Du Maurier

Whenever there was chaos in my house, whether it was arguing, being in a cramped space with all of us kids and screaming, I found an empty space where I could just put music on and move. — Misty Copeland

The things we truly love, the things forming the basis and roots of our being, are generally things we never look at. A huge piece of carpeting, empty and naked plains, silent and uninterrupted stretches with nothing to alter the homogeneity of their continuity. I love wide, homogenous worlds, unstaked, unlimited like the sea, like high snows, deserts, and steppes. — Jean Dubuffet

I believe deeply that God does his best work in our lives during times of great heartbreak and loss, and I believe that much of that rich work is done by the hands of people who love us, who dive into the wreckage with us and show us who God is, over and over and over. There are years when the Christmas spirit is hard to come by, and it's in those seasons when I'm so thankful for Advent. Consider it a less flashy but still very beautiful way of being present to this season. Give up for a while your false and failing attempts at merriment, and thank God for thin places, and for Advent, for a season that understands longing and loneliness and long nights. Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it's been lost. — Shauna Niequist

It was, for the time being, an empty threat, and he must have sensed it also, for he laughed easily and with contempt. You will do what your masters tell you to do, doctor. As do we all. — Iain Pears

There are certain people that are so much a part of you, that are so loved, that they shine up your insides just by being around. They fill in all your parts that feel empty. And when they leave the world, you don't know how to be without them. — Jessica Lawson

Being empty makes me whole sometimes. I wonder if every hollow hole has its own solidity of fulfillment — Munia Khan

I love solitude. I love being alone. People are loud, and overwhelming and too mundane. They talk of the weather, and taking out the trash, and their shiny new toys that are nothing more than meaningless trophies in their empty lives. People are afraid of solitude. They're afraid to be alone. They're afraid of their thoughts. — Ali Blythe

I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just this heavy, overwhelming despair - dreading everything. Dreading life. Empty inside, to the point of numbness. It's like there's something already dead inside. My whole being has been pulling back into that void for months. (81) — Kay Redfield Jamison

For years I was so busy building walls I did not see I was imprisoning myself behind them, and did not recognize this pattern as being addiction. My addictive thinking and behavior became the bars of my cell. Denying feeling empty inside, I constantly looked for new things to acquire, people to be around, substances to take, and new goals to achieve in order to feel better about myself. Over the last four decades I have focused on healing my addictive mind and helping others do the same. — Lee L Jampolsky

There is even rhythm in being empty. — Miyamoto Musashi

I've seen what comes next. Vigils. Concern is the new consumerism. A person's worth can be measured by the number and intensity of his concerns. Candles, lighting a candle, confers the kind of fulfillment that only empty ritual can bring. Empty ritual's important. It's coming back as a force in people's lives. Its role is being acknowledged. It's the keystone for tomorrow's dealings in an annexed and exploited world. And holding a candle, cradling a little flame with others holding their candle, cradling their little flame gives people the opportunity to experience something bigger than themselves without surrendering themselves to it. — Joy Williams

You can disappear inside of yourself and become an empty shell with depression in mind. It's that feeling of being invisible. Sometimes when I wake up I don't feel like my head is attached to my body - there's nothing. — Elena Tonra

Don't ever empty the bucket of mystery. Never let people define what you do. It's not about zigging when you should zag. It's not about doing something unprecedented and unpredictable. It's just about never being a word, or something that is not in the process of transformation. — Marilyn Manson

When a man is forced into early retirement, he is often being 'given up for a younger man.' Being forced into early retirement can be to a man what being 'given up for a younger woman' is for a woman ... Why do many men get more upset by retirement than women do from the empty nest when their children leave home? When females retire from children, they can try a career; when a man retires from a career, his children are gone. — Warren Farrell

You go to bed different ... tossing and turning is the norm ... you wake to a sunny day but clouds follow you wherever you go. You wonder if you are strong enough to climb out of the depression you are living in and your prayers to God seem empty because you are sooo very tired of telling him the same thing over and over again ... if we are really being real ... there may even be moments after impact you forget how to pray ... maybe you don't even want to. — Erica Stone

We are never done, then, with conscience. Make up your mind what to do with it, Brutus; make up your mind what to do with it, Cato. It is without end, being God. We throw into this bottomless pit a lifetime of labor, we throw into it our fortune, we throw into it our success, we throw into it our liberty or our country, we throw into it our well-being, we throw into it our repose, we throw into it our joy. More! More! More! Empty the vessel! Tip out the urn! We are forced in the end to throw in our hearts. Somewhere in the mists of the old underworld there is a barrel like that. — Victor Hugo

In order to explain historically how all the early Christians came to the belief they held, that Jesus had been raised, we have to say at least this: that the tomb was empty, except for some graveclothes, and that they really did see and talk with someone who gave every appearance of being a solidly physical Jesus, though a Jesus who was strangely changed, more strangely than they were able fully to describe. Both the meetings and the empty tomb are therefore necessary if we are to explain the rise of the belief and the writing of the stories as we have them. Neither by itself was sufficient; put them together, though, and they provide a complete and coherent explanation for the rise of the early Christian belief. Is — N. T. Wright

Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died ... He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life ... Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense. — Jhumpa Lahiri

When the people of God abandoned the covenant of love and fidelity, drawn as we are by the appeal of shallow, empty pleasures, God removed every possible obstruction to the covenant by being faithful for us, by becoming like us and subjecting Himself to the very worst within us, loving us all the way to the cross and all the way out of the grave. — Rachel Held Evans

In the absence of the great majority of guests, all manner of rumors came into the Shalimar Bagh, hooded and cloaked to shield themselves against the elements, and filled the empty places around the dastarkhans: cheap rumors from the gutter as well as fancy rumors claiming aristocratic parentage - an entire social hierarchy of rumor lounged against the bolsters, created by the mystery that enveloped everything like the blizzard. The rumors were veiled, shadowy, unclear, argumentative, often malicious. They seemed like a new species of living thing, and evolved according to the laws laid down by Darwin, mutating randomly and being subjected to the amoral winnowing processes of natural selection. The — Salman Rushdie

I have been cheated out of being treated like a human being. In my reflection I saw an empty vessel. They had cheated me and I was desperate to make the sharp pain in my head stop. — M.B. Dallocchio

Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with the trees up close but from the outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not free, but she moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer stars. The place was big in its smallness. Here, she was free of her master but slunk around a warren so tiny she couldn't stand. — Colson Whitehead

But-when you really think about it-that emotional support only applies to the experience of living in public. We don't have ways to quantify ideas like "amazing" or "successful" or "lovable" without the feedback of an audience. Nobody sits by himself in an empty room and thinks "I'm amazing." It's impossible to imagine how that would work. But being "amazing" is supposed to be what life is about. As a result, the windows of time people spend by themselves become these meaningless experiences that don't really count. It's filler. They're deleted scenes. pg 156 — Chuck Klosterman

As I drifted along with my bodiless invisibility, I felt myself more and more becoming an empty, floating shape, seeing without being seen and walking without the interference of those grosser creatures who shared my world. It was not an experience completely without interest or even pleasure. The clown's shibboleth of "here we are again" took on a new meaning for me as I felt myself a novitiate of a more rarified order of harlequinry. ("The Last Feast Of The Harlequin") — Thomas Ligotti

He stares into the sky, his eyes absent and empty, an expression that branded its horrible meaning into my mind long, long ago. A candle without a spark, a sky without a sun, the look people get when they cease to be people, start being bodies. — Sara Raasch

Isabel saw the intimacy of the gestures and felt immediately empty, a sensation so physical and so overwhelming that she felt for a moment that she might stop breathing, being empty of air — Alexander McCall Smith

Both the American and the European approaches to foreign policy were the products of their own unique circumstances. Americans inhabited a nearly empty continent shielded from predatory powers by two vast oceans and with weak countries as neighbors. Since America confronted no power in need of being balanced, it could hardly have occupied itself with the challenges of equilibrium even if its leaders had been seized by the bizarre notion of replicating European conditions amidst a people who had turned their backs on Europe. — Henry Kissinger

I call the high and light aspects of my being SPIRIT and the dark and heavy aspects SOUL.
Soul is at home in the deep shaded valleys.
Heavy torpid flowes saturated with black grow there.
The rivers flow like arm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul.
Spirit is a land of high,white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.
Life is sparse and sound travels great distances.
There is soul music, soul food, and soul love.
People need to climb the mountain not because it is there
But because the soulful divinity need to be mated with the Spirit.
Deep down we must have a rel affection for each other, a clear recognition of our shared human status. At the same time we must openly accept all ideologies and systems as means of solving humanity's problems. No matter how strong the wind of evil may blow, the flame of truth cannot be extinguished. — Dalai Lama XIV

The stillest thing in the world is the corpse of someone you loved. A hunk of cold granite seems more alive than a dead human being. You don't expect a stone to move. A person robbed of all motion and cold to the touch is the most alien object in the world. Natural instinct drives us away from the decaying body, and quickly. Yet love compels us forward, to kiss the empty vessel of the soul departed. ...Lesson two: there are many fates worse than death. The most common is surviving the death of a loved one. For the dead, all questions have been answered or made irrelevant. For the survivor, some questions have been rendered unanswerable. — Greg Iles

Living in fear is what every hater, negative person, and the devil wants. Live a righteous life with God and nothing but positivity. You must forgive anyone who has done you dirty, and move on. Your personal life, career, and love life will be that much more amazing after. Life is too short to live it being empty inside, sad, angry, and defensive just to hide your pain. Let it all go and let love and happiness in. Put yourself out there all the way and don't be fearful of losing love. If you don't live life by fully enjoying it and opening your heart, your just not living. — Behdad Sami

I didn't understand her being gone, either. I had seen her fall. Now her part of any conversation would always be unsaid, and the direction she would have gone walking would always be empty. Her absence extended in lines of numbers made of smoke, backward in memory and forward in futures never to occur. — Gordon Dahlquist

Abby wouldn't want you to suffer because of some jerk that kidnapped her. She would want you to go on your trip so that she would have fun torturing you for not being a puddle on the ground with a box of tissues and an empty gallon of ice cream by your side. Then afterwards to hit you for thinking she was seriously hoping you would be doing that. — Ottilie Weber

I love you, Ink, and I want you-only you. Being strong doesn't mean I don't want you too. You are the only person who knows every part of my life, every part of me in it, the good and the bad and the horrible, and you still love me. You are always with me, even when you're not there. And when you're not there, I can feel it, like an empty space where you ought to be, and I can hardly wait until you're back to fill it again. Neither world feels like it fits, but we belong. — Dawn Metcalf

Though they were separated by two screens and vast amounts of empty space, she could feel the link being forged between them in that look. A bond that couldn't be broken. Their eyes had met for the first time, and by the look of pure amazement on his face, she knew he felt it too.
Heat crept up into her cheeks. Her hands began to shake.
"Aces," Carswell Thorne murmured. Dropping his feet to the ground, he leaned forward to inspect her closer. "Is that all hair?"
The bond snapped, the fantasy of one perfect true-love moment disintegrating around her. — Marissa Meyer

What art thou, life, that we, must court thy stay?
A breath one single gasp must puff away!
A short-lived flower, that with the day must fade!
A fleeting vapor, and an empty shade!
A stream that silently but swiftly glides
To meet eternity's immeasured tides!
A being, lost alike by pain or joy?
A fly can kill it, or a worm destroy!
Impair'd by labor, and by ease undone,
Commenced in tears, and ended in a groan. — Alexander Brome

But I have thought of you often during these holidays and imagined how quiet you must be in your lonely fort among the empty hills, upon which those big southerly winds precipitate themselves as though they would devour them in great pieces.

The stillness must be immense in which such sounds and movements have room, and when one thinks that to it all the presence of the far-off sea comes chiming in as well, perhaps as the inmost tone in that prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish for you that you are confidently and patiently letting that lofty solitude work upon you which is no more to be stricken out of your life; which in everything there is ahead of you to experience and to do will work as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, much as in us blood of ancestors ceaselessly stirs and mingles with our own into that unique, not repeatable being which at every turning of our life we are. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Mom was silent for a moment. I'm sorry, Melissa, but can you blame me for worrying? In less than an hour I found out you're being stalked by a killer, sleeping with a stranger, and hiding with him in an empty apartment. You have to admit that sounds ... unsettling. — Robin DeJarnett

The face before him was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was smooth, with a black strip of cloth tied over its forehead, and yet it was deeply furrowed, like the sea, that can have tall waves but not a wrinkle on the surface. The eyes were like dark chasms and yet they were the eyes of a human being and not empty sockets. The skin was a greenish olive colour and looked as if it were made of bronze ... — Gustav Meyrink

Srinagar is a medieval city dying in a modern war. It is empty streets, locked shops, angry soldiers and boys with stones. It is several thousand military bunkers, four golf courses, and three book-shops. It is wily politicians repeating their lies about war and peace to television cameras and small crowds gathered by the promise of an elusive job or a daily fee of a few hundred rupees. It is stopping at sidewalks and traffic lights when the convoys of rulers and their patrons in armored cars, secured by machine guns, rumble on broken roads. It is staring back or looking away, resigned. Srinagar is never winning and never being defeated. — Basharat Peer

Do you remember? Do you remember being solid? Do you remember life before the hole? Before you were empty and needed to be filled? There was a time when everything was enough. There was a time you didn't try to get out of your own skin. Remember? — Amy Reed

Human life is fragile: we live in the space between one breath and the next. We often try to maintain an illusion of permanence, through what we do, say, wear, buy, and how we enjoy ourselves and who and how we love. Yet it is an illusion that is constantly being undermined by change and death. We can use diamonds in whatever way we like. They are empty things, pretty as water, yet within them - if we want to see it - there is blood, dust, love, curses, and suffering. There is desire to make someone happy, there is admiration, there is ostentation ... and there is a company's profit curve. — Victoria Finlay

Everyone else out there in the world knew who they were, they carried their histories inside them everywhere they went; whereas she was just an empty husk of nothing masquerading as a human being. — Lucinda Riley

What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty. — Jodi Picoult

Being a monk was the strangest and most perverted way of life imaginable. Monks spent half their lives putting themselves through pain and discomfort that they could easily avoid, and the other half muttering meaningless mumbo jumbo in empty churches at all hours of the day and night. They deliberately shunned anything good - girls, sports, feasting and family life. — Ken Follett

Each being is simply what it is and it is a serious mistake to treat your world as though it existed for you, as if what you value in each thing is its value. In a sense, the Buddha argued, all things are "empty," in that they simply do not possess the "soul" that a grasping, craving person invests them with. Pile all your expectations onto some person or object as though you truly hope it will deliver what you want, and you are making the fundamental mistake. The notion of non-soul (anatman) is difficult to understand, but it is one of the Buddha's most provocative teachings. — John Renard

I am not me, I am not a human being.
I am empty.
Infinite emptiness dwells in me.
I am the spirit.
Emptiness is me. — Debasish Mridha

Is it possible that, with each inhalation, we take in the world and awaken our soul? And with each exhalation, do we free ourselves of the world, which inevitably entangles us? Is this how we fill up and empty a hundred times a day, always seeking the gift of the two breaths? Perhaps this is the work of being. — Mark Nepo

I didn't like anybody in that school. I think they knew that. I think that's why they disliked me. I didn't like the way they walked or looked or talked, but I didn't like my mother or father either. I still had the feeling of being surrounded by white empty space. There was always a slight nausea in my stomach. — Charles Bukowski

If, therefore, there is some end of our actions that we wish for on account of itself, the rest being things we wish for on account of this end, and if we do not choose all things on account of something else - for in this way the process will go on infinitely such that the longing6 involved is empty and pointless - clearly this would be the good, that is, the best. — Aristotle.

The idea is to help patients more clearly assess the contents of their thought stream, teaching them to note and correct the conceptual errors termed "cognitive distortions" that characterize psychopathological thinking. Somone in the grips of such thinking would, for instance, regard a half-full glass not merely as half-empty but also fatally flawed, forever useless, constitutionally incapable of ever being full, and fit only to be discarded. By the mid-1980s, cognitive therapy was being used more and more in combination with behavioral therapy for OCD, and it seemed naturally compatible with a mindfulness-based perspective. If I could show that a cognitive-behavioral approach, infused with mindful awareness, could be marshaled against the disease, and if successful therapy were accompanied by changes in brain activity, then it would represent a significant step toward demonstrating the causal efficacy of mental activity on neural circuits. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

We were deluged together in the raw, unbalanced Stuff of the universe. Inevitable consequence:
My own little reification.
I was made flesh, and in the process taken from him. I was never supposed to be real. How terrifying to confide your every doubt to an imaginary companion, to bequeath to him every alternative, and then one day turn and see him standing before you. Gonzo must be feeling so hollow inside, with me spun out and separated from him. It must be quiet and empty in there.
And that, of course, is how I survived being shot. Freshly minted, new, I wasn't real enough to die. — Nick Harkaway

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

Three people stood close behind him, but all Cress could see were the blue eyes staring back at her, directly back at her, beginning to fill with the same breathless awe she felt.

The same wonder.

The same enchantment.

Though they were separated by two screens and vast amounts of empty space, she could feel the link being forged between them in that look. A bond that couldn't be broken. Their eyes had met for the first time, and by the look of pure amazement on his face, she knew he felt it too. — Marissa Meyer

It is a sexual violation. It's disgusting. The law needs to be changed, and we need to change. That's why these Web sites are responsible. Just the fact that somebody can be sexually exploited and violated, and the first thought that crosses somebody's mind is to make a profit from it. It's so beyond me. I just can't imagine being that detached from humanity. I can't imagine being that thoughtless and careless and so empty inside. — Jennifer Lawrence

The human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one's spirit strong, even when one's body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation. Your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty. — Nelson Mandela

For the church as we know it is a tragically dysfunctional family, in which some children are starving while others have food stashed in their closets. Some of us are living on the street while others have empty rooms in our homes. And, of course, there are all sorts of things being done that bring great dishonor and embarrassment to the family name. — Shane Claiborne

There is a breeze blowing. I see it in the deep discontent that is being voiced with the threadbare state of the evangelical world, with its empty worship, its market-driven superficiality, and its trivial thought. It is a breeze blowing toward better, deeper, more honest things. I suspect that it is the Holy Spirit who is blowing, that this is his breeze, and that these leaves that are shaking are the signs of better things to come within an evangelical faith that is thus being reformed. Let us all pray that it is so! — David F. Wells

That autumn, I kept coming back to Hopper's images, drawn to them as if they were blueprints and I was a prisoner; as if they contained some vital clue about my state. Though I went with my eyes over dozens of rooms, I always returned to the same place: to the New York diner of Nighthawks, a painting that Joyce Carol Oates once described as "our most poignant, ceaselessly replicated romantic image of American loneliness" ...
Green shadows were falling in spikes and diamonds on the sidewalk. There is no colour in existence that so powerfully communicates urban alienation, the atomisation of human beings inside the edifices they create, as this noxious pallid green, which only came into being with the advent of electricity, and which is inextricably associated with the nocturnal city, the city of glass towers, of empty illuminated offices and neon signs. — Olivia Laing

He loves me, and I reward his love by forcing on him something he hates. In the evening, after we dance, he rarely returns to the throne; he dances with others or moves from place to place through the room. The court thinks he is trying to be gracious, sharing his attention. Only I see that he moves always to the empty spot and the court always moves after him. He is like a dog trying to escape his own tail. He indulged himself in one brief moment of privacy, and almost died of it. Relius, he hates being king. — Megan Whalen Turner

It is fathomless, since it is God. One flings into that well the labor of one's whole life, one flings in one's fortune, one flings in one's riches, one flings in one's success, one flings in one's liberty or fatherland, one flings in one's well-being, one flings in one's repose, one flings in one's joy! More! more! more! Empty the vase! tip the urn! One must finish by flinging in one's heart. — Victor Hugo

The Divine may come to life in individual man, may reveal itself from within individual man; but it attains its earthly fullness only where, having awakened to an awareness of their universal being, individual beings open themselves to one another, disclose themselves to one another, help one another; where immediacy is established between one human being and another; where the sublime stronghold of the individual is unbolted, and man breaks free to meet other man. Where this takes place, where the eternal rises in the Between, the seemingly empty space: that true place of realization is community, and true community is that relationship in which the Divine comes to its realization between man and man. These — Martin Buber

It's not a case of the glass being half full or half empty; more that we tipped a whole half-pint into an empty pint pot. I had to see how much was there, though, and now I know. — Nick Hornby

[T]he flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.
A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself, The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.
The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self, — Thich Nhat Hanh

I had a weird, empty feeling inside me. Not a bad sort of empty. It was a sort of lack of sensation, like being in pain for a long time and then suddenly realizing that you're not anymore. It was the feeling of having risked everything to be here with a boy and then realizing that he was exactly what I wanted. Being a picture and then finding I was really a puzzle piece, once I found the piece that was supposed to fit beside me. — Maggie Stiefvater

I felt empty a lot and I sometimes had a sense - and I know this sounds strange - that I really had no existence as my own person, that I could disappear and no one would notice or remember that I had ever existed. It is a terrifying thing to live with. I kept myself busy to avoid that feeling, because somehow being busy made me feel less empty. — John William Tuohy

If you do not follow somebody you feel very lonely. Be lonely then. Why are you frightened of being alone? Because you are faced with yourself as you are and you find that you are empty, dull, stupid, ugly, guilty and anxious - a petty, shoddy, secondhand entity. Face the fact; look at it, do not run away from it. The moment you run away fear begins. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

There was nothing now but this empty treadmill of what Clifford called the integrated life, the long living together of two people, who are in the habit of being in the same house with one another.
Nothingness! To accept the great nothingness of life seemed to be the one end of living. All the many busy and important little things that make up the grand sum-total of nothingness! — D.H. Lawrence

If you expect to reach the goal of perfection, never look at the cup as being half empty, see it as being half full. — Barbara Hart

Being in a foreign place, preferably for the first time, having seen many things and collected new impressions, and returning to an empty hotel room with an hour or so to blow. That mix often yields fine results. — Stefan Sagmeister

emptying out of my mother's belly
was my first act of disappearance
learning to shrink for a family
who likes their daughters invisible
was the second
the art of being empty
is simple
believe them when they say
you are nothing
repeat it to yourself
like a wish
i am nothing
i am nothing
i am nothing
so often
the only reason you know
you're still alive is from the
heaving of your chest — Rupi Kaur

I beg you to stop your arguing and listen. The prophets speak of this time, when the Chosen One of God will cleave us apart, separating the believers from those who will be cast into the outer darkness. Have you ever in all your days seen a time when the division has been clearer? Have you ever known a time when miracles rained down from an empty sky, when the prophets' words were so clearly being fulfilled? — Janette Oke

When you feel thankful, you can be appreciative for a moment, then not at all the next. It seems the tank is full, then it becomes empty, and the cycle continues. If you don't feel the same gratitude for a moment, know that it's possible in the next moment that comes around. — J.R. Rim

Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer the empty consolation of being right. — David Landes

Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back. It must be held out empty - for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity. — Dag Hammarskjold

And if we are being philosophical - which we today are - we can say that life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero. We know that both states exist, but we will not be conscious of either experience: they are states that are necessary parts of life, even as they cannot be experienced as life. We assume the concept of nothingness, but we cannot prove it. But it must exist. — Hanya Yanagihara

So after some instruction, Joseph put on the apron and started carefully polishing the clean dishes even though it made no sense to him.
Over the course of the day, he learned how to wash the floors and clean the windows and empty out the iron stove. Soon the kitchen smelled of lemons and spices, fresh bread and soap.
There was a short break for lunch before resuming work. The light shifted during the afternoon and cascaded through the clean windows, burnishing the room with gold.
Joseph was so focused on the work, on the patters of the silverware and the curve of the handles on the ancient pitchers and measuring cups, that he forgot for a little while about his parents, and St. Anthony's, and the fire, and losing Blink. He felt a kind of pride in being allowed to touch all the delicate glassware, plates, and bowls, and he hadn't broken a single thing. — Brian Selznick

I like to think of the word love as a door. If you only look at the door, all you get is an idea about what love is; but if you are willing to move closer to the door, to open it, and to walk on through, you get to have an experience of what love is. To be intimate with love, you have to move beyond words, leave behind self-concepts, empty your mind of learned ideas, stop being so religious, and let yourself dissolve into love. Now we are really getting somewhere. Now, at last, we can stop trying to define love, and we can let — Robert Holden

There's a kind of luck that's not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that's not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment. — Gregory David Roberts

And when I die all the memories of my own life will go to the grave with me, God willing, and Dick will never have to look back at them. And his children will never even know what my life was like. They'll know nothing of grinding stones and being hungry and ashamed all day and being beaten by a teacher who couldn't write himself and being sure you kept your mind so empty that you had no thoughts at all. And that's what I've done for them, that's my gift to them and to all their children ever after, so don't talk to me about being hard. — Sebastian Faulks

Constantly having to think about money is not nice. People used to say, 'Being rich doesn't make you happy'. And I'd think, 'I've got no electricity, nothing - tell that to my empty fridge'. — Rebecca Ferguson

The universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being. — Matsuo Basho

In travelling where novelties of all kinds press in upon us, mental food is often supplied so rapidly from without that there is no time for digestion. We regret that the quickly shifting impressions can leave no permanent imprint. In reality, however, it is with this as it is with reading. How often we regret not being able to retain in the memory one-thousandth part of what is read ! It is comforting in both cases to know that the seen as well as the read has made a mental impression before it is forgotten, and thus forms the mind and nourishes it, while that which is retained in the memory merely fills and swells the hollow of the head with matter which remains ever foreign to it, because it has not been absorbed, and therefore the recipient can be as empty as before. — Arthur Schopenhauer

No, I was never that kind of guy. I believed in true romance; one-night stands are always going to leave you feeling cold and empty. I was always looking for the real thing, romance, and all that. I love being married. I never liked the idea of going to bars and chasing girls. Some guys might enjoy that, but I always wanted to find that one special woman, which I did when I met Jenna. — Channing Tatum

As you climbed, leaving the little village paths down below, the noise of the earth, the crickets, the quails and other birds began their morning song, their chant, their rich worship of the day. And as the sun arose you were part of that light and had left behind everything that thought had put together. You completely forgot yourself. The psyche was empty of its struggles and its pains. And as you walked, climbed, there was no sense of separateness, no sense of being even a human being. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I feel a lot of guilt about the freedom that being an artist provides. I ask myself, 'Why am I not the guy emptying the trash, why am I the guy who is watching the guy empty the trash?' — Jason Molina

I had a moment when I first got on Supernatural when I was like, "Oh my god, people are paying attention to me, I have fans, maybe I should cultivate an image and try to seem really cool." I had this moment of being commercially self conscious and it took maybe a month for me to realize no, this is not who I ****ing am, and here's a picture of me in drag. Which is, by the way, so much more liberating and relaxing. There's not a more sure fire way to give a stifled, boring, empty, vapid, meaningless interview than trying to say the right thing ... — Misha Collins

A lot of what making art is, is just being open, and empty. And putting yourself in the right place for things to, literally, come together. — Bill Viola

Before they are able to enter a new story, most people - and probably most societies as well - must first navigate the passage out of the old. In between the old and the new there is an empty space. It is a time when the lessons and learnings of the old story are integrated. Only when that work has been done is the old story really complete. Then, there is nothing, the pregnant emptiness from which all being arises. Returning to essence, we regain the ability to act from essence. Returning to the space between stories, we can choose from freedom and not from habit. — Charles Eisenstein

Shortly after, the aqueous symphony of dawn began. The last day of the Walk came up wet and overcast. The wind howled down the almost-empty alley of the road like a lost dog being whipped through a strange and terrible place. — Stephen King

He found the first skipped meals were the hardest, the hunger a hollow ache. The longer he went without eating, though, the second day, the third, the pain would subside from an ache to the memory of an ache and finally to only the memory of a memory. Until you ate you didn't know how hungry you were, how empty you'd become. Wallace's visits had shown him that being lonesome was its own fast, that after going unnourished for so long, even the foulest bite could remind your body how much it needed to eat. That you could be starving and not even know it. — Tom Franklin

it is true that both the Red Army and the secret police traditionally gave vodka to soldiers who were being asked to do dirty work: empty bottles are almost always found inside mass graves. — Anne Applebaum

embodied in the remark that dear far-away Ruth's intentions were doubtless good. She and Kent are even yet looking for another prop, but no one presents a true sphere of usefulness. They complain that people are self-sufficing. With Saltram the fine type of the child of adoption was scattered, the grander, the elder style. They've got their carriage back, but what's an empty carriage? In short I think we were all happier as well as poorer before; even including George Gravener, who by the deaths of his brother and his nephew has lately become Lord Maddock. His wife, whose fortune clears the property, is criminally dull; he hates being in the Upper — Henry James

Lena scowled at the empty space in her living room. "Oh sure, thanks, I had fun too." She'd stayed awake, spilled a cup of perfectly good tea, and for what? A spirit with the noncorporeal equivalent of erectile dysfunction. Mostly she was fine being permanently on-call in the Veil. On nights like this, however, it sucked. — Laura Oliva

Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race. What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you. — Marquis De Sade