Wise Quotes about Emptiness

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

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

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)

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

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow...
but only empties today of its strength.
- C. H. Spurgeon

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
- Naguib Mahfouz

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

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

All this worldly wisdom was once
the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

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

The more a man can forget, the greater the number
of metamorphoses which his life can undergo,
the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.
- Soren Kierkegaard

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
- John F. Kennedy

The man who is awakened, lives in such a way
that he leaves no footprints.
- Osho quoting The Buddha

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

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

A man should look for what is,
and not for what he thinks should be.
- Albert Einstein

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

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

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

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

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

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

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me,
that man with all his noble qualities...
still bears in his bodily frame
the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
- Charles Darwin

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

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy.
What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
- Carl Jung

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

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,
teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb

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

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

I do not know whether I was then
a man dreaming I was a butterfly,
or whether I am now
a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
- Zhuangzi

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

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

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 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

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

You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln

The wise man looks back into the past,
and does not grieve over what is far off,
nor rejoice over what is near;
for he knows that time is without end.
- Lao Tzu

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

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

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Wisdom Quotes