Filled With Emptiness Quotes & Sayings

The void can only be filled with love. — Marty Rubin

What we prayed for was emptiness, so we would be worthy to be filled: with grace, with love, with self-denial, semen and babies. — Margaret Atwood

All his plans were suddenly overthrown, and the existence, so elaborately pictured, was no more than a dream which would never be realized. He was free once more. Free! He need give up none of his projects, and life still was in his hands for him to do what he liked with. He felt no exhiliration, but only dismay. His heart sank. The future stretched out before him in desolate emptiness. It was as though he had sailed for many years over a great waste of waters, with peril and privation, and at last had come upon a fair haven, but as he was about to enter, some contrary wind had arisen and drove him out again into the open sea; and because he had let his mind dwell on these meads and pleasant woods of the land, the vast deserts of the ocean filled him with anguish. He could not confront again the loneliness and the tempest. — W. Somerset Maugham

If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A busy life is filled with tremendous emptiness. — Debasish Mridha

She didn't watch the dead, ancient bone-chess cities slide under, or the old canals filled with emptiness and dreams. Past dry rivers and dry lakes they flew, like a shadow of the moon, like a torch burning. — Ray Bradbury

In order to indoctrinate their followers and secure obedience, religions frequently tear people down, creating an emptiness that must then be filled with Jesus, Allah or any other deity. People are told that they are inherently bad or sinful and that the only way to become good is by giving over control of their lives to faith. As there is no evidence that any of that is true, religion, in effect, is creating an imaginary problem simply so that it can sell an imaginary solution. — Armin Navabi

Get yourself empty in the Eastern sense. Not in the Western sense. In the Western sense when we feel empty we feel lonely, miserable, but in the Eastern sense - "I'm so empty, because I'm filled with everything, and I'm connected to everything." It's very energizing. You want that kind of emptiness, whatever you have to do to get yourself quiet. — Sandra Cisneros

The kindness sent from one compassionate soul to another during the time of loss of one held so dear allows the sorrow-filled heart to open wide, filling the space of emptiness that grief may have created with a renewed sense of peace, compassion, and love. — Molly Friedenfeld

I seemed to leave my body momentarily, and another presence filled me - Sethian - every bit of emptiness within my soul had become saturated with his essence. No - bonded. Joined, connected - our souls had somehow become one. — Cristina Rayne

On the Decker bus she often gave up her seat to older passengers or to women with young children, she was nervously alert to the needs or near-needs of other people. It pleased and excited her to see the space she'd occupied taken, the emptiness where she had been so readily filled in. — Joyce Carol Oates

The Church is the only entity equipped to penetrate to the spiritual roots of our moral illnesses. We are to call out the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the economy, enlisting the weapons of love, joy, patience, goodness, kindness and self-control, which are the foundation of true freedom. Many Christian teachers rightly point out that our society's willingness to take on the slavery of debt in exchange for stuff is an expression of the deep emptiness that people are seeking to fill within themselves. One of the most powerful aspects of the Gospel is that this emptiness can only be filled by the loving reconnection with the Father that Jesus offers. For this reason, it is less critical that we condemn the world's decadence than that we make an appeal to human desire and how it is genuinely fulfilled. — Stephen K. De Silva

I didn't know when I began to care what Knox thought about me. In fact, we enjoyed having a mutual disdain for the other, it kept us honest. But somewhere along the way the waters got muddled and now the emptiness that had consumed me before was filled with an ache. — Teresa Mummert

When I feel like shoveling in food, the emptiness can be filled only with love
(April 2012, O Magazine) — Anne Lamott

This is perdition: the things to which the heart was attached pass away while the person himself, who is an eternal being, is filled with nothing but emptiness when he should have been filled with God Himself. That is why it is so very important that we turn our focus inward to the source of life that lives forever, even as we ourselves will live forever. — Johan Oscar Smith

He needed a story to go with her wildness, her coldness, her hollowness. The real story was that she'd had everything and hadn't deserved it, when she'd still wanted something else to sate a broken twisting emptiness that couldn't be filled. — Cole McCade

Her mind was present because she was always gone. Her hands were filled because they grasped the meaning of empty. Life was simple. Her husband returned and she served him with indifferent patience this time. When he asked what had happened to her heat for him, she gestured to the west.
The sun was setting. The sky was a body of fire. — Louise Erdrich

He never had a positive feeling of love towards any of them, however. He just went with them and had sex with them. They filled each other's emptiness. Strange as it may seem, he never once felt a strong emotional attraction to any of the women who had a strong emotional attraction to him. — Haruki Murakami

But somewhere in America, between the freeways and the Food-4-Less, between the filling stations and the 5-o-'clock news, behind the blue blinking light coming off the TV, there is a space, an empty space, between us, around us, inside us, that inevitable, desperate, begs to be filled up. And nothing, not shame, not God, not a new microwave, not a wide-screen TV or that new diet with grapefruits, can ever, ever fill it.
Underneath all that white noise there's a lack. — Andrea Portes

death of a child or a brother or a sister, one may half-waken, thinking of that person with that same lost emptiness, that feeling of places which may never be filled . . . perhaps not even in death? — Stephen King

I'm standing in the lake, forming a whirlpool with my arms, letting the force of atonement pull me into its center until I cannot any longer hang onto my observations or any sense of myself, like dust and hydrogen clouds getting all excited white creating new stars to light the backyard. How poignantly emptiness cries out to be filled. — Henri Cole

Surrounding the two of them was the love they shared but also an overwhelming feeling of fear
fear of a future filled with the emptiness which would consume them if they remained apart. A fear of a future of being separated forever, and it gripped both of their hearts, demanding preventative action. — Madison Thorne Grey

They say you don't get over someone until you find someone or something better. As humans, we don't deal well with emptiness. Any empty space must be filled. Immediately. The pain of emptiness is too strong. It compels the victim to fill that place. A single moment with that empty spot causes excruciating pain. That's why we run from distraction to distraction - and from attachment to attachment. — Yasmin Mogahed

Loneliness was tricky: a cup filled at one moment with freedom, and the next, with emptiness. — Laura Resau

We often feel proud of our knowledge even when it is filled with emptiness. — Debasish Mridha

NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER According to James Masterson in The Narcissistic and Borderline Disorders, the main clinical characteristics of the narcissistic personality disorder are: Grandiosity, extreme self-involvement, and lack of interest and empathy for others, in spite of the pursuit of others to obtain admiration and approval. The narcissist is endlessly motivated to seek perfection in everything he does. Such a personality is driven to the acquisition of wealth, power and beauty and the need to find others who will mirror and admire his grandiosity. Underneath this external facade there is an emptiness filled with envy and rage. The core of this emptiness is internalized shame. — John Bradshaw

I'm chasing a decade old ghost. Searching beneath the rafters of a cobweb-filled haven lined with old memories which my brain cannot accept are dead. The light of nostalgia is burning bright inside my heart. Ignoring the emptiness around me, and hoping for a resurrection of love. — LeAnne Mechelle

A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness. — Margaret Atwood

Specifically, one whose life is ruled and dictated by dependency needs suffers from a psychiatric disorder to which we ascribe the diagnostic name "passive dependent personality disorder." It is perhaps the most common of all psychiatric disorders.
People with this disorder, passive dependent people, are so busy seeking to be loved that they have no energy left to love. They are like starving people, scrounging wherever they can for food, and with no food of their own to give to others. It is as if within them they have an inner emptiness, a bottomless pit crying out to be filled but which can never be completely filled. They never feel "full-filled" or have a sense of completeness. They always feel "a part of me is missing." They tolerate loneliness very poorly. Because of their lack of wholeness they have no real sense of identity, and they define themselves solely by their relationships. — M. Scott Peck

Miles of ocean, and oh, the vastness of it, shadows and salt, fierce dark water filled with alien emptiness and the monsters that lived there. Imagine falling into that water and knowing it was below you, even as you treaded water, desperately trying to remain on the surface; the terror of the realisation of what was under you - miles and miles of nothingness and monsters, blackness stretching away everywhere and the sea floor so far below - would tear your mind apart. — Cassandra Clare

Into darkness will I fade,
Into a night that Man has made,
But through that gloom shall gleam the sun
When I am lost, and again am won.

Release! Release! I call to thee
In new lands across the sea:
Let, another on narrow pathways, come to me.

Furthest and Highest,
yet not beyond reach.
Choose thou well a path that will teach
How the sunken is raised
and emptiness is filled
and a wandering heart
can finally be stilled.

Seek the great stone! Mark it well,with a sign.
That the one who shall follow
Shall see it is mine,
and seeing, shall ponder and certainly know
As the Ancients have writ: "As above, so below."

And I shall guard the Source of Greatness;
Waiting by a teardrop
From neither joy nor sorrow born,
In silver bound, beneath the ground,
I am the spiral horn. — Michael Green

She'd said that revenge was not sweet, that it was bloody. She was wrong. It *was* sweet. For one fleeting, glorious moment you felt incredible satisfaction. Then it was gone, empty, and you had to go on living. The power high that filled me with her light had faded, and all I tasted now were bitter ashes. — Sunny

Truly in the heart there is a void that can not be removed except with the company of Allah. And in it there is a sadness that can not be removed except with the happiness of knowing Allah and being true to Him. And in it there is an emptiness that can not be filled except with love for Him and by turning to Him and always remembering Him. And if a person were given all of the world and what is in it, it would not fill this emptiness. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

For one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future. — Elie Wiesel

Filled with anything? Find an emptiness and let your load flow into it! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

He wagged his tail, and his whole body tingled. He realized the emptiness inside was not filled with happiness. Blue felt a glow within that was a result of more than just the warm sunshine on a spring day.
It was more than just the gentle tumble of the waterfall, or the wind or the sound of birds. It was much, much more he knew. He looked about him and he knew he had found what he had been looking for.
He had found more than his true heart's desire ...
He had found a forever home! — Michael Delaware

You had felt idle in this city through which you had paced only to kill time. But the emptiness that you believed yourself confronted with was an illusion: you had filled those moments with sensations all the more powerful in that nothing and no one had distracted you from them. — Edouard Leve

But there's quality behind Dustin's eyes when he talks, a dimness, like the slow fade of a dying flashlight. Like someone forgot to replace the batteries in Dustin's face. This kind of emptiness can only be filled with heartache and struggle and I-don't-know-what...the enormity of things. The shit-stink of life. And neither the enormity nor the shit-stink can be found in a pancake breakfast. Pain is what matters. — David Arnold

I know a bit about the loss of dignity. I know that when you take away a man's dignity there is a hole, a deep black hole filled with despair, humiliation and self-hatred, filled with emptiness, shame and disgrace, filled with loss and isolation and hell. It's a deep, dark, horrible fucking hole, and that hole is where people like me live our sad-ass, fucked-up, dignity free, inhuman lives, and where we die, alone, miserable, wasted and forgotten. — James Frey

The heart which has no agenda but God's is the heart at leisure from itself. Its emptiness is filled with the Love of God. Its solitude can be turned into prayer. — Elisabeth Elliot

With what characters she had filled this lost stage of emptiness! It was here that she would see the people of her imagination, the fierce figures of her making, as they strolled from corner to corner, brooded like monsters or flew through the air like seraphs with burning wings, or danced, or fought, or laughed, or cried. This was her attic of make-believe, where she would watch her mind's companions advancing or retreating across the dusty floor. — Mervyn Peake

Enlightenment is a timeless void. It's an emptiness that's filled with the most excellent light. — Frederick Lenz

While doing the postures, your mind should be in half-consciousn ess, which does not mean sleep. It means silence, emptiness, space, which can then be filled with an acute awareness of the sensations given by the posture. You watch yourself from inside. It is a full silence. — B.K.S. Iyengar

I feel sorry for you," he said slowly. "I guess you wouldn't know what it's like to be loved or wanted by anybody. You're right, though; Beth isn't human, because humans have a soul that they struggle all the time to stay in touch with. Every day is a battle for them to listen to their conscience and do the right thing. If you knew Beth at all you'd know that she doesn't have a soul, she's ALL soul. She's filled with it, more than any human possibly could be. You wouldn't know that because emptiness and hatred is all you've ever know. But that won't win out in the end-you'll see."
"You're very cocky for a mere human," the demon replied. — Alexandra Adornetto

Jeremy, when I first met you, you filled a void in my life - a physical need - in a fun and exciting way. But the more I spend time with you, especially like last night, where I can talk to you and get to know you, the more I realize you fill up the emptiness in my heart too. — E.M. Lynley

When a woman's wave rises she feels she has an abundance of love to give, but when it falls she feels her inner emptiness and needs to be filled up with love. — John Gray

A world without music is only filled with sounds in the air — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Sometimes I think I am made of air, like a balloon. Filled with so much emptiness that I just know one day I'm going to explode. I'm bracing myself for it. For the nothingness colliding hard and fast against me, in a way that I won't be able to stop it or protect myself from it.
What terrifies me the most is the fact that maybe I won't want to stop it. That I won't want to protect myself. That I've surrendered, accepted this and conformed to it — Tammy Faith

What people had shed and left
a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes
those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. — Virginia Woolf

I hated Sundays as a kid. From the moment I woke up, I could feel Monday looming, could feel another school week all piled up and ready to smother me. How was I supposed to enjoy a day of freedom while drowning in dread like that? It was impossible. A pit would form in my chest and gut - this indescribably emptiness that I knew should be filled with fun, but instead left me casting about for something to do.
Knowing I should be having fun was a huge part of the problem. knowing that this was a rare day off, a welcome reprieve, and here I was miserable and fighting against it. Maybe this was why Fridays at school were better than Sundays not in school. I was happier doing what I hated, knowing a Saturday was coming, than I was on a perfectly free Sunday with a Monday right around the corner. — Hugh Howey

They say there's nothing inside but emptiness,' Maureen told me later. I made no comment, but filled in by kissing her hair or something of the kind. Maureen had at that time rather droopy hair, possibly owing to lack of vitamins during the war, which she kept off her brow with a big tortoiseshell slide. Her brow was really beautiful, and so were her eyes. They had that gentle look of being unequal to life, which, as I later realised, always attracts me in a woman. — Robert Aickman

What people had had shed and left
a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes
those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor. — Virginia Woolf