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Empty Quotes

“I closed my eyes. The only things I knew about why Empty Ones worked the way we did was that we had room for extra souls because we started out with less, and that we could make gates because of our innately human sense of home. But my home was here. How on earth was I supposed to find another one?The gate needs to be opened and closed before dawn, Cresseda said, a hint of strain flowing through her voice.YES. THANKS FOR THAT. VERY HELPFUL RIGHT NOW.”

WayNeedsHumansSaidSoulHomeEyeEarthVoiceRoomsRight NowEmptyThanksDawnExtrasHelpfulGatesStrainHints
Author:Kiersten White
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“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.”

IfsWayWantTryingHumansUseLife IsDesireSufferingNextEnjoyWaterSpaceCompanyBloodIllusionEmptyBreathsProfitDustHuman LifeCurseAdmirationFragileDiamondCurvesPermanenceSpace BetweenOstentationLife Is FragileMake Someone Happy
Author:Victoria Finlay
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“American housewives have not had their brains shot away, nor are they schizophrenic in the clinical sense. But if ... the fundamental human drive is not the urge for pleasure or the satisfaction of biological needs, but the need to grow and to realize one's full potential, their comfortable, empty, purposeless days are indeed cause for a nameless terror.”

IfsNeedsHumansGrowsCausesRealizingPleasureBrainComfortableShotsEmptyFundamentalsTerrorSatisfactionUrgesHousewifeFull PotentialNamelessSchizophrenicClinicals
Book:The Feminine Mystique
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“I know the woman has no soul, I know The woman has no possibilities Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so. It is her flesh that I adore; I go Thirsting afresh to drain her empty kiss. I know she cannot love: it is not this My vanquished heart implores in overthrow. Tyrannously I crave, I crave alone, Her splendid body, Earth's most eloquent Music, divinest human harmony; Her body now a silent instrument, That 'neath my touch shall wake and make for me The strains I have but dreamed of, never known.”

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Book:Poems
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“Immediate knowledge tells us only that God is, not what he is. But if God is not an empty Being beyond the stars, he must be present in the communion of human spirits, and, in his relation to these, he is the One Spirit who pervades reality and thought. Hence there can be no final separation between our immediate consciousness of him and our mediated knowledge of reality.”

IfsHumansRealitySpiritStarsConsciousnessEmptyRelationFinalsSeparationCommunionHuman SpiritBeyond The Stars
Book:Typical Modern Conceptions of God: Or, The Absolute of German Romantic Idealism and of English Evolutionary Agnosticism, with a Constructive Essay
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“I'm only trying to present as honest a portrayal of the grimness of human ambition as I can. I'd hope it's rather uplifting, actually, since I find the sort of blind optimism and empty laughter of a great deal of "contemporary culture" to be more depressing than something that admits to a potential for disappointment and a gnawing sense of existential mockery.”

TryingHumansI CanCultureDealsHonestAmbitionLaughterEmptyOptimismBlindDisappointmentContemporaryUpliftingDepressingExistentialMockeryPortrayalBlind Optimism
Author:Chris Ware
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“The liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man would venture to write on any subject, however, pure his purpose, without an attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other. From minds thus subdued by the fear of punishment, there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason.”

MenWritingMindHumansReasonWould BeLawPurposeSoundLibertyIssuesSubjectsMediaCrimeGeniusPureSpeechEmptyConstitutionPressesPunishmentEmpiresVenturePersecutionAttorneyElbowsHuman Reason
Author:Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine
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“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments-which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.”

PeopleHumansMayEndsWholeMomentsStoriesHappensPainLife IsPurposeCausesDifficultHuman BeingsSleepPleasureLevelsViewsExistenceMinutesMissingAspectEmptyFundamentalsAverageDeterminedMeaningfulSignificantThings HappenPlusHappy LifeDevotedMeasurementHuman ExistenceArcsPain And PleasureDifficult LifeSignificant Moments
Book:Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End
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“Although the Christian is thus free from all works, he ought in this liberty to empty himself, take upon himself the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in human form, and to serve, help and in every way deal with his neighbor as he sees that God through Christ has dealt and still deals with him.”

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Book:Martin Luther: Selections From His Writing
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“Awakening is not a state but a process: an ethical way of life and commitment that enables human flourishing. As such, it is no longer the exclusive preserve of enlightened teachers or accomplished yogis. Likewise, nirvana-the stopping of craving-is not the goal of the path but its very source. For human flourishing first stirs in that clear, bright, empty space where neurotic self-centredness realizes that it has no ground at all to stand on. One is then freed to pour forth like sunlight.”

WayFirstsHumansSelfStatesProcessGoalRealizingSpacePathClearTeacherSourceCommitmentEmptyAwakeningPreservesAccomplishedEnlightenedEthicalSunlightStoppingCravingExclusiveNeuroticFlourishingEmpty SpaceYogi
Author:Stephen Batchelor
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“Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species. --speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962”

NeedsHumansHas BeensLiteratureGamesChurchCitiesResponsibilityChangedDutyGrewNeededSpeechDespairSingingLowsEmptyFunctionSpeciesCriticalHallsPaleExclusiveNobelDecemberCaloriesPriesthoodHuman NeedsBanquetsBardsStockholmCity Hall
Book:A Life in Letters
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“The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.”

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Book:Children of Dune
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“But the fact of it was that I liked it out there, a ruin devoid of human vanities, clean of human illusions, an empty place reclaimed by the weather where a woman plays an organ to stop the wind's whining and an old man plays ball with a dog named Duke. I could tell you that I came back because I had promises to keep, but maybe it was because nobody asked me to stay.”

MenHumansPlayFactsDogWindPromiseIllusionEmptyBallsCleanWeatherRuinsVanityOld ManOrgansDukesWhiningEmpty Places
Book:Slouching towards Bethlehem
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“Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.”

FirstsHumansWarWishFeetBirthCircumstancesKissingEmptyLaysInstinctSurfaceVarietyVanityConsiderationFree WillAbandonedPeterWetDecayFirst LoveIdealismShallowGloomFallacyBirth ControlGreat WarPromptsAftermathTinHurdleBatteredMutabilitySardines
Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
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“I've lived so little that I tend to imagine I'm not going to die; it seems improbable that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself, that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor memory; and then all of a sudden they stop.”

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Book:Whatever: A Novel
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“Yes, I laugh at all mankind, and the imposition that they dare to practice when they talk of hearts. I laugh at human passions and human cares, vice and virtue, religion and impiety; they are all the result of petty localities, and artificial situation. One physical want, one severe and abrupt lesson from the colorless and shriveled lip of necessity, is worth all the logic of the empty wretches who have presumed to prate it, from Zeno down to Burgersdicius. It silences in a second all the feeble sophistry of conventional life, and ascetical passion.”

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Author:Charles Robert Maturin
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“I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts - possessions, outward success, luxury - have always seemed to me contemptible.”

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Author:Albert Einstein
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“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.”

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Author:Marquis de Sade
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“I may be just an empty flesh terminal reliant on technology for all my ideas, memories and relationships, but I am confident that all of that everything that makes me a unique human being is still out there somewhere, safe in a theoretical storage space owned by giant, multinational corporations.”

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Author:Stephen Colbert
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“To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.”

IfsMenMindHumansLittlesSoulMatterBigsCertainSufferingBehaviorDrawsConsciousEmptySizeGasRelativeQuantityChamberHuman SoulAnalogiesSearch For MeaningConscious MindHuman SufferingMans Search For Meaning
Book:Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition
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“Most of our difficulties, our hopes, and our worries are empty fantasies. Nothing has ever existed except this moment. That's all there is. That's all we are. Yet most human beings spend 50 to 90 percent or more of their time in their imagination, living in fantasy. We think about what has happened to us, what might have happened, how we feel about it, how we should be different, how others should be different, how it's all a shame, and on and on; it's all fantasy, all imagination. Memory is imagination. Every memory that we stick to devastates our life.”

ThinkingFeelsShouldHumansDifferentMomentsMightImaginationMemoriesHuman BeingsWorryFantasyOur LivesHappenedPercentEmptyDifficultyShameSticks
Author:Joko Beck
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“Now, almost one hundred years later, it is difficult to fully appreciate how much our picture of the universe has changed in the span of a single human lifetime. As far as the scientific community in 1917 was concerned, the universe was static and eternal, and consisted of a one single galaxy, our Milky Way, surrounded by vast, infinite, dark, and empty space. This is, after all, what you would guess by looking up at the night sky with your eyes, or with a small telescope, and at the time there was little reason to suspect otherwise.”

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Author:Lawrence M. Krauss
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“Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.”

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Author:Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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“It is utterly and irrevocably possible to empty all hurts and therefore to love, to have compassion. To have compassion means to have passion for all things, not just between two people, but for all human beings, for all things of the earth, the animals, the trees - everything the earth contains. When we have such compassion we will not despoil the earth as we are doing now and we will have no wars.”

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Author:Jiddu Krishnamurti
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“The theist can only find meaning by leaving this life for a transcendental world beyond the grave. The human world as he finds it is empty of 'ultimate purpose' and hence meaningless. Theism thus is an attempt to escape from the human condition; it is a pathetic deceit.”

WorldHumansPurposeAtheismConditionsEmptyUltimateLeavingGravesThis LifeDeceitMeaninglessHuman ConditionPatheticFind MeTranscendentalTheismTheist
Book:Toward a New Enlightenment: The Philosophy of Paul Kurtz
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“The weeds of a seemingly learned and brilliant but actually trivial and empty philosophy of Nature which, after having been replaced some 50 years ago by the exact sciences, is now once more dug up by pseudo scientists from the lumber room of human fallacies, and like a trollop, newly attired in elegant dress and make-up, is smuggled into respectable company, to which she does not belong.”

YearsHumansDoePhilosophyScienceNatureNaturalRoomsCompanyYears AgoEmptyScientistAccountsDressesBrilliantWeedReplacedElegantRespectableFallacyPseudoExact SciencesLumber
Author:Hermann Kolbe
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“Citizenship has not delivered Indigenous Australians the same quality of life other Australians expect. Basic human rights involve health, housing, education, employment, economic opportunity, and equality before the law, and respect for cultural identity and cultural diversity. These human rights must be capable of being enjoyed otherwise they are empty gestures.”

LifeHumansLawOpportunityQualityRightsEconomicIdentityDiversityCapableEmptyHuman RightsEmploymentEnjoyedGesturesCitizenshipHousingIndigenousQuality Of LifeCultural DiversityCultural IdentityBasic Human Rights
Author:Jackie Huggins
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