Quotes & Sayings About Empty Shell

Until I saw Chardin's painting, I never realized how much beauty lay around me in my parents' house, in the half-cleared table, in the corner of a tablecloth left awry, in the knife beside the empty oyster shell. — Marcel Proust

He pocketed his watch with a milder look, and began to turn about busily in the empty shell of his own mind. His universe was a brilliantly illuminated circle extending from himself at it's centre to the exact limit of his occupations and interests. — Edith Wharton

Wealth for its own sake is an empty shell. Wealth that includes making other people's lives better will reward you even more than the beautiful mansion you live in. — Gene Simmons

After scientists broke open the coat of a lotus seed (Nelumbo nucifera) and coddled the embryo into growth, they kept the empty husk. When they radiocarbon-dated this discarded outer shell, they discovered that their seedling had been waiting for them within a peat bog in China for no less than two thousand years. This tiny seed had stubbornly kept up the hope of its own future while entire human civilizations rose and fell. And then one day this little plant's yearning finally burst forth within a laboratory. I wonder where it is right now. — Hope Jahren

I sleep for an entire day. And when I wake up I'm a new person. I'm empty. I've cried out everything I had in me. I'm an empty shell waiting to be filled with what comes next. Or I'm just being a total drama queen. I'm not empty. I'm still a person. I cried over a bad thing that happened in my life, but I probably shouldn't have. Compared to Mom's crisis, mine was small. Compared to a thousand other girls' around the world, mine is insignificant. It wasn't bad. Not compared to everyone else. It was just a couple seconds. It wasn't years. It wasn't months, like Mom. It wasn't a family member. Wasn't someone I see anymore. It didn't even hurt. There was no blood. It wasn't bad. Not compared to others'. So I should stop crying. — Sara Wolf

You have my heart, my soul, my life. I'm an empty shell without you. — Maria V. Snyder

Christ, he was empty, just a shell of himself. He had nothing to give, not even his seed. — Charlotte Featherstone

Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell? — Mary Balogh

Strength is an empty shell. — Jack London

Avada Kedavra!" "Expelliarmus!" The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hand, staring down at his enemy's shell. — J.K. Rowling

Love me Sophia, in my foolishness, love my words and not my mortal remains. be tidal to me in the constancy of change. Break over me where I feel most safe, be a shore to me, when I fear I am a wave in the water, endlessly slipping away. Lift me up like a shell from the beach, now empty, now full. Lift me up and there are still songs. — Jeanette Winterson

I'm empty. I've cried out everything I had in me. I'm an empty shell waiting to be filled with what comes next.
Or I'm just being a total drama queen — Sara Wolf

I've never been so empty in my life. You took my soul with you. You took my heart. I'm this empty shell who goes through the motions every day, waiting for you to call me. Waiting until you answer my calls. — Abbi Glines

I was just a shell of the person I used to be-hard on the outside and empty on the inside. Those marks were my own personal tombstonr, reminding me every day that I was just as dead as the one I'd murdered. — Tabatha Vargo

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

It took me ten years to write a proper story. I floundered about trying to shape something, counting on the 'feeling' I had as I wrote, only to discover upon rereading my work that the feeling had disappeared, and what remained was an empty shell. — David Bergen

He needed her so badly, to reassure himself of his
own existence, that he never comprehended the desperation in her dazzling, permanent smile, the terror in the brightness with which she faced the world, or the reasons why she hid when she couldn't manage to beam ... every moment she
spent in the world was full of panic, so she smiled and smiled and maybe once a week she locked the door and shook and felt like a husk, like an empty peanut-shell, a monkey without a nut. — Salman Rushdie

At times, feeling the wind on my brow, I went numb with horror. In my imagination I saw armies of ants and cockroaches calling to one another and scurrying toward my head, to some place under the top of my skull, where they would build new nests. There they would proliferate and eat out my thoughts, one after another, until I would become as empty as the shell of a pumpkin from which all the fruit has been scraped out. — Jerzy Kosinski

A town without a bookstore is an empty shell of a place. — Ellery Adams

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

There's just this empty shell, pretending to be human."

"That's not true." I wished she could see herself the way I saw her- not some cold, distant model, but the girl who'd IM'd me and kept me from being alone. You're the most sincere, passionate, real person I've ever met."

"I don't think that person exists anymore"

"She does," I said. "I'm talking to her — Todd Mitchell

It is an awfully sad misconception that librarians simply check books in and out. The library is the heart of a school, and without a librarian, it is but an empty shell. — Jarrett J. Krosoczka

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. — Rick Riordan

Yeah, I'd rather be a flower that only blossoms once before it dies, and then nourishes the ground with its remains - than this empty soul that's stuck in a dead shell. — Michelle Horst

No perfection can last forever. Time tears at it; wears it down until it's nothing, just an empty shell. — Cassandra Giovanni

Sad truth is. . . we all end up alone on some death bed. Yeah? No way to take anybody else's place and no way we can be lying on the same one."

I was at the edge of the white-wed cloth. My shoes filled with concrete, as did my head, looking at the empty shell of what was once a woman full of wonder.

"Any way to make someone feel not so alone?" she asked.

"The only thing anyone can ever do is help someone feel a little less lonely before they get there."

"How does someone do that?"

"Memories. Help create memories. Better ones. Ones to replace the old. — S.D. Lawendowski

I can't deceive myself that out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide. — Sylvia Plath

Also unlike a planet, an electron - if excited by heat or light - can leap from its low-energy shell to an empty, high-energy shell. The electron cannot stay in the high-energy state for long, so it soon crashes back down. But this isn't a simple back-and-forth motion, because as it crashes, the electron jettisons energy by emitting light. — Sam Kean

The pain has receded but what's left is the shell of pain, an empty space where there should be pain but instead there is the expectation of pain. — Audrey Niffenegger

A pen, you see, you hold it between your thumb and your index finger. No, wait, you hold it however you want. After that, it's not hard, you don't even think about it. Your hands don't exist anymore. The important thing happens elsewhere. No, this won't do, it's still too pretty. You're not being asked to come up with something pretty, you know. No one gives a damn about pretty. There are children's drawings and glossy magazines for that. So put on your mittens, little genius, little empty shell, yes, go on, put them on, I tell you, and maybe at last you'll see, you'll draw an almost perfect failed circle. — Anna Gavalda

Life without love, without chasing your dreams, is nothing. It means nothing. It's a sad fucking empty shell, Catherine. It's so easy to drown in darkness, to let it smother you, swallow you whole, to be blinded by it. But you gotta fight. You gotta fucking fight. — Mia Asher

Didn't she know yet? People you loved, the ones you cared about the most, they all died eventually. No one was spared. When you lost them, everything you had, all of your heart, was lost, too. It crippled you. Left you an empty shell, functioning on instinct alone. "You're horrible," she whispered, so softly that — Sophie Jordan

Empty, empty, empty; silent, silent, silent. The room was a shell, singing of what was before time was; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold, holding the still, distilled essence of emptiness, silence. — Virginia Woolf

With a hologram, like when your teacher is one of them, if you aren't looking right at them, they sometimes seem to be hollow. You see them and suddenly they don't have a face that pokes out. Their faces poke in, their nose and so on, and there is nothing inside them. If you don't look right at them, they can look just like an empty shell. — M T Anderson

Sometimes by holding onto what you love the most - you end up choking the very life from the thing you want to keep on living. It's possible to try too hard, to love something so deeply that you lose yourself. The danger is never in loving someone - but losing your identity in the process. Because what happens when tragedy strikes? You're left an empty shell. You're left with nothing. — Rachel Van Dyken

Emptiness felt like a living thing. A parasite growing in the center of your chest, somewhere behind your heart, taking every ounce of warmth and light and happiness and consuming it until there's nothing left. Emptiness feels like exhaustion, like there's no reason to fight, no reason to take another breath, no reason to try to survive. But emptiness also feels like freedom. Because it doesn't just take the good, it takes the bad, too--the anger, the bitterness, the pain--and when it's done, it leaves you with just you. A cold, shell-like echo of yourself, but still you. — Ava Jae

I should be happy, but instead I feel nothing. I feel a lot of nothing these days. I've cried a few times, but mostly I'm empty, as if whatever makes me feel and hurt and laugh and love has been surgically removed, leaving me hollowed out like a shell. — Jennifer Niven

I think everyone spins. You would just be an empty vacant shell reporting facts. I mean, you have your life that you bring with you to every moment that happens. — Rosie O'Donnell

Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell. — Haruki Murakami

Certain memories, certain thoughts,are holes...holes ripped in you, through which precious things escape and leave you wanting, needing, gaping open. Laughter and belonging and comfort gush out, leaving their tracks but not their substance.
And you are left empty, a skeleton,a shell with wind rushing through you and a sensation of sinking, barely existing... — Danielle Younge-Ullman

Our teachers remind us there are just five more weeks of school, and I should be happy, but instead I feel nothing. I feel a lot of nothing these days. I've cried a few times, but mostly I'm empty, as if whatever makes me feel and hurt and laugh and love has been surgically removed, leaving me hollowed out like a shell. I — Jennifer Niven

Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. — Pope Benedict XVI

Don't worry, I can't be bothered! You're not worth the trouble it would take to hit you! You're not worth the powder it would take to blow you up. You are an empty, empty, hollow shell of a woman. I mean, what the hell are you doing in my house if you hate me so much? Why the hell are you married to me? What the hell are you doing carrying my child? I mean, why didn't you just get rid of it when you had the chance? Because listen to me, listen to me, I got news for you - I wish to God that you had! — Richard Yates

Message fifty-nine. Almost two months. I've never been so empty in my life. You took my soul with you. You took my heart. I'm this empty shell who goes through the motions every day, waiting for you to call me. Waiting until you answer my calls. I never imagined a life like this, but without you, I can't imagine life. You are my life. You were what was missing in my life. I was searching so hard for something to make me feel whole. I found that with you. You lit up my world and made everything so damn bright and exciting. But now you're gone, and I'm in a dark place, waiting. Needing to hear you. To touch you, To ... — Abbi Glines

If ELF don't exist, I would just be an empty shell — Leeteuk

All the things people carry in their hearts, love, hatred, fears, and they had to be shared with a friend or a loved one, because when we do not share them, sometime, all the things love, anger, hatred, fears ends up coming out of us mixed-up. We just become a shell with nothing inwards us, an empty soul with nothing in it, that is as bad as dying. — Shaikh Ashraf

One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside - just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it. Years — Ayn Rand

If you have no past or no future, which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide. But the cold reasoning mass of gray entrail in my cranium which parrots, 'I think, therefore I am,' whispers that there is always the turning, the upgrade, the new slant. And so I wait. — Sylvia Plath

If thou could'st empty all thyself of self
Like to a shell dishabited
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf
And say This is not dead and fill thee with Himself instead.
But thou art all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity
That when He comes He says This is enow Unto itself - 'twere better let it be
It is so small and full there is no room for me. — Madeleine L'Engle

This empty shell holds nothing but the echoes of what was. — Jenim Dibie

To see an input stream at work, enter cat (with no filenames) and press ENTER. This time, you won't get your shell prompt back because cat is still running. Now type anything and press ENTER at the end of each line. The cat command repeats any line that you type. Once you're sufficiently bored, press CTRL-D on an empty line to terminate cat and return to the shell prompt. — Brian Ward

The afflicted are almost upon them. The air is a din of hypersonic bursts, snarls and empty shell casings. But still I hear him. As his people start to fall. As his pistol clicks empty. As he rises with only his knuckles left between him and the sheer brutality of mathematics. As the music swells above the carnage, still I hear him breathe the words. "Tell them I was thinking of them. At the end." They pile onto him. All snarls and teeth and fists. But as he falls, I am holding his hand. Easing him into his long good night. "I will tell them, David." The last words he will ever hear. 'I promise. — Amie Kaufman

Richard Collins had only taken weeks to destroy the little boy I'd known. He was this shell, okay? This empty shell, and I didn't know how to fix it. And then, Ox. Oh, and then there was you." She — T.J. Klune

corner, an empty shell that is merely — Krishna Udayasankar

I felt numb, I felt empty. I was a shell, an abandoned chrysalis, a tomb lying in wait for the dead — Amy Hatvany

Technology innovation for the sake of innovation is an empty shell if we focus on what people don't need but would buy anyways. — Iveta Cherneva

No! Such as they will not destroy marriage - they will save it! They restore the vital substance while we preserve the empty shell. — Jesse Lynch Williams

The religion of this 'I', the poetry of this 'I', and the philosophy of the same 'I' that from Poggio and Felelfo to Byron and Goethe produced a number of works astonishing for their profundity and brilliance have finally exhausted its content; and in the poetry of Decadence we see the rapid falling away of the empty shell of this 'I'. We remarked previously about the exaggeration without the exaggerated object, and about the precious style without the subject of this preciosity, which characterize this poetry - this is so in regard to its form; in regard to its content Decadence is above all hopeless egoism. The world, as an object of love, of interest, even as the object of indignation or contempt, has disappeared from this "poetry"; the world has disappeared, not only as an object exciting some reaction in this vapid 'I', but also as a spectator and possible judge of this 'I'; it is not even present.

("On Symbolists And Decadence") — Vasily Rozanov

As he rested in the great hollow shell of tranquility and light, listening to its silence, it dawned upon him that 'empty' was the wrong word for this place. It was as full as could be: full of silence, full of light, full of peace. There — Penelope Wilcock

As I stood there,hushed and still,I could swear that the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed as it had lived before. — Daphne Du Maurier

Her hands were empty now, as empty as her heart, which itself was a coconut shell with its meat scooped out. — Thrity Umrigar

Without you, I'd be a shell of a man. A hollowed-out, empty, lifeless carcass. And I know that because I've been there. I lived through it. I lived through losing you due to my own stupidity, and I can never explain to you what that felt like — J. Sterling

Maybe I can learn to live in a way that makes it worth writing about, and maybe I can actually become something more than this empty shell. — Charlotte Eriksson

But the reality is that it is impossible to explain, to verbalize, to articulate the fear that they instill in you. The people who judge, the people who criticize, who don't get it - you have to understand, they're coming at the situation from a position of safety, of security, of self-esteem. You cannot imagine, when you're well and safe and contented, that you could ever feel otherwise. When you're in it... it's like a vortex, a dark, whirling whirlpool that swallows up everything that you ever thought was you, your thoughts, your values, your beliefs, and leaves you with an empty, shattered shell. And that shell, you realize painfully, gradually, is you. — Jeannette De Beauvoir

Sooner or later she'll figure out the truth: you're a shell of a man, all she has to do is knock against you to find out you're empty. — Nicole Krauss

Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out? — John Kenneth Galbraith

You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no ... anything. There's no chance at all of recovery. You'll just - exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever ... lost. — J.K. Rowling

Maybe we can hold the windows and doors," Mars said doubtfully. The ruined building was little more than a shell, with no roof and gaping empty rectangles for windows. "But if they charge us ... " "They're charging!" Hel shouted. — Michael Scott

Without ELF, I'm just an empty shell. I'll always love E.L.F., even if E.L.F. already forgot about SJ. — Leeteuk

You are a shell of a man, all she has to do is knock against you to find out you are empty. — Nicole Krauss

Pearl II [10w]
If the world's your pearl then you're an empty shell. — Beryl Dov

A poem is a skeletal shape. When I say it to you, I am dropping the empty shell of a crab into your warm, green ocean... — Jeffrey L. Hollman

Human beings have become so afraid of the unknown, themselves, and each other that they deprive themselves of that innate ecstasy and love of life which comes with a human body, mind and spirit, by hiding behind the empty shell of their ego. — Frederick Lenz

And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hands, staring down at his enemy's shell. — J.K. Rowling

The shadows that lingered in the corners of the large chamber were a reflection of what he felt inside - an empty shell of darkness. Of the last three decades of his punishment, this was the first time that he felt forsaken. Now, he truly knew what it felt like to be one of the fallen, without the light of having or giving love. — L.G. Castillo

I can't deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide. But the cold reasoning mass of gray entrail in my cranium which parrots "I think, therefore I am," whispers that there is always the turning, the upgrade, the new slant. And so I wait. What avail are good looks? To grab temporary security? What avail are brains? Merely to say "I have seen; I have comprehended? — Sylvia Plath

Shattered dreams, worthless years, here I am encased in a hollow shell. Life began, then was done, now I stare into a cold and empty well. — Stevie Wonder

Life
luscious wet life bereft of
death, loss of empty shell
minus absent of nothing
exploding star cell
amoeba sweet algae
oxygen,
hydrogen flowering
in the vacuum of
space and magnetic motion. — H. Raven Rose

The State became the master. The national element moved from the realm of form to the realm of content; it became what was most central and essential, turning the socialist element into a mere wrapping, a verbal husk, an empty shell. Thus was made manifest, with tragic clarity, a sacred law of life: Human freedom stands above everything. There is no end in the world for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom. — Vasily Grossman

The Roundhouse was a complete shell. It was absolutely empty, lying derelict for years. — Richard Stanley

What can we expect from an empty shell
Where many hearts of pearl once beat to dwell
Waves fail to break hard layer's bond of love
Wailing shore sends memoir to the sky above — Munia Khan

Writing every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty ... like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again. — Daphne Du Maurier

My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell.
Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn't care anymore. I couldn't hang on anymore. I didn't have the guts to kill myself, but I didn't want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry.
... The diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight into coherence allowed for some rationalizing an afterlife. A new theology was evolving, one that had a faith-in-death clause. It was evolved when I kicked a dead waterbug on the pavement. It was dried out, hollowed, emptied, like some kind of shell. Maybe, I thought, its body is a shell, maybe all bodies are shells. We hatch and die. Our spirit or something like that is the yoke: it lives the real life, the true life.
It wasn't comforting. — Arthur Nersesian

Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty. — Lionel Shriver

An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind ... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence — Haruki Murakami

Ego, Identity and Self - the 3 concepts of one's creation that defines them entirely. Have an Ego, for without one, there is nothing but self-doubt. Have an Identity, for without one, there is nothing but an empty shell. Understand your 'Self,' for if you don't, then who or what are you? — Lionel Suggs

We are empty shells if we do not possess, if we do not fill our life with furniture, with music, with knowledge, with this or that. And that shell makes a lot of noise, and that noise we call living; and with that we are satisfied. When there is a disruption, a breaking away of that, then there is sorrow, because you suddenly discover yourself as you are-an empty shell, without much meaning. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman
a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth? — Lillian B. Rubin

that town, they had gone under and now just the rotting empty shell remained. Having left all that was his home — Tim Heath

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans. — Ernest Hemingway,