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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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 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

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

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.

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.

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

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

One man with courage makes a majority.
- old saying probably repeated by Andrew Jackson
(falsely attributed to Jefferson)

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
the wise grows it under his feet.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer

A man who as a physical being
is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and
discovers that the source is within him.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Any man who reads too much
and uses his own brain too little
falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein

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

Feel Unity with Spirit and All Creation
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 [actually written by screenwriter Ted Perry in 1972]

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.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
- B. C. Forbes

The gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man perfected without trials.
- Confucius

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau

Money has never made man happy, nor will it,
there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.
The more of it one has the more one wants.
- Benjamin Franklin

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.

There is a sufficiency in the world
for man's need but not for man's greed.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

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

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein

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

The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully, is prepared to die at any time.
- Mark Twain

Man becomes great exactly in the degree
in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
- The Buddha

If a man can... make a better mousetrap,
the world will make a beaten path to his door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

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

Well, I don't know what will happen now.
We've got some difficult days ahead.
But it doesn't matter with me now.
Because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind. Like any man,
I would like to live a long life.
Longevity has its place.
But I'm not concerned about that now.
I just want to do God's will.
And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I've looked over.
And I've seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight, that we,
as a people, will get to the promised land.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Many a man fails as an original thinker
simply because his memory is too good.
- Nietzsche

A wise man will make haste to forgive,
because he knows the true value of time,
and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson

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

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden

If thou wilt make a man happy,
add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.
- Epicurus

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks-
if we agree with him.
- Mark Twain

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

If a man does not know what port he is steering for,
no wind is favorable to him.
- Seneca

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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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