Emptiness Quotes

I hope you find great value in these Quotes about Emptiness from my large collection of inspirational quotes and motivational sayings.

The nature of life is to be
a study of contrasts: joy/sadness, full/empty.
The Main Thing is to Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing.
- Stephen Covey

Life is empty and meaningless
because life is empty and meaningless.
- Werner Erhard

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Rumi (Persian poet 1207-1273)

One cannot have a mind that is empty of all thoughts,
but one can have a mind that is content with
whatever thoughts fill it at the moment.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Overflowing Cup of Tea:
The Zen Master poured his visitor's teacup full, and then kept pouring.
The visitor watched until he could no longer restrain himself.
"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," the Zen Master said,
"you are full of your own opinions and assumptions.
How can you learn truth until you first empty your cup?"
- Traditional Zen Koan

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan

When we talk about democracy, if the people's
stomach is empty, democracy is also empty.
Democracy can not be installed by fiat;
it must be achieved by the people themselves.
- Jimmy Yen

Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows.
Man lies in a woman's womb only to gather strength,
he nourishes himself from this fusion,
and then he rises and goes into the world,
into his work, into battle, into art.
He is not lonely. He is busy.
The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion.
The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty.
Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure
in which she has bathed,
and a charge of electric joy at contact with another.
When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled,
each act of love a a taking of man within her,
an act of birth and rebirth, of child-bearing and man-bearing.
Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew
with a desire to act, to BE.
But for woman, the climax is not in the birth,
but in the moment the man rests inside of her.
- Anais Nin

If a man empties his purse into his head,
no man can take it away from him.
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
- Benjamin Franklin

Love is like an hourglass,
with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
- Jules Renard

Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)

The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu

The full measure of a man is
not to be found in the man himself,
but in the colors and textures that
come alive in others because of him.
- Albert Schweitzer

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man
are fixed upon the same creation;
but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.
- Albert Pike

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences,
in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures -
and that is the basis of all human morality.
- John F. Kennedy

Nothing can stop the man with the right
mental attitude from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man
with the wrong mental attitude.
- Thomas Jefferson

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear,
but the triumph over it.
The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid,
but he who conquers that fear.
- Nelson Mandela

Is the babe young? When I behold it,
it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
- Henry David Thoreau

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

A great secret of success is to go through life
as a man who never gets used up.
- Albert Schweitzer

The man who goes alone can start today;
but he who travels with another
must wait till that other is ready.
- Henry David Thoreau

Early to bed and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin

When you are offended at any man's fault,
turn to yourself and study your own failings.
Then you will forget your anger.
- Epictetus

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life,
he will lose his reverence for all of life.
- Albert Schweitzer

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- William Shakespeare

Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding
and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis
of man's desire to understand.
- Neil Armstrong

A man can do only what he can do.
But if he does that each day he can sleep at night
and do it again the next day.
- Albert Schweitzer

Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour

Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
A man should do his job so well that the living,
the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing,
and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
- George Bernard Shaw

Science gives man knowledge, which is power;
religion gives man wisdom, which is control.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a man loses pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau

I wept because I had no shoes
until I met a man who had no feet.
- old Persian Proverb

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid
as getting to know how enormously much
he is capable of doing and becoming.
- Soren Kierkegaard

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question
than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
- Bruce Lee

You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him find it within himself.
- Galileo Galilei

A man is but the product of his thoughts -
what he thinks, he becomes.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil

When the tempest rages, when the thunders roar,
and the lightnings blaze around us
it is then that the truly brave man stands firm at his post.
- Luther Martin

If the stars should appear
but one night every thousand years
how man would marvel and stare.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The ultimate test of a man's conscience
may be his willingness to sacrifice something today
for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
- Gaylord Nelson

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready
for his opportunity when it comes.
- Benjamin Disraeli

The wise man looks into space,
and does not regard the small as too little,
nor the great as too much;
for he knows that there is no limit to dimensions.
- Lao Tzu

Take a chance! All life is a chance.
The man who goes farthest is generally
the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted,
but beholds it as something
unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
- Albert Schweitzer

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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