Craftsmanship And Emptiness Quotes

God has allowed some magical reversal to occur,
so that you see the scorpion pit
as an object of desire,
and all the beautiful expanse around it
as dangerous and swarming with snakes. ~ Rumi

Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors. ~ Joseph Addison

You will remember this when all else fades, this moment, here, together, by this well. There will be certain days, and certain nights, you'll feel my presence near you, hear my voice. You'll think you have imagined it and yet, inside you, you will catch an answering cry. On April evenings, when the rain has ceased, your heart will shake, you'll weep for nothing, pine for what's not there. For you, this life will never be enough, there will forever be an emptiness, where once the god was all in all in you. ~ John Banville

But the stillness and the brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult of night, with the trees standing there, and the flowers standing there, looking before them, looking up, yet beholding nothing, eyeless, and so terrible. ~ Virginia Woolf

Now you know how much my love for you
burns deep in me
when I forget about our emptiness,
and deal with shadows as with solid things. ~ Dante Alighieri

I labored in vain reciting the Three Histories
I wasted my time reading the Five Classics
I've grown old checking yellow scrolls
recording the usual everyday names
Continued Hardship was my fortune
Emptiness and Danger govern my life
I can't match riverside trees
every year with a season of green ~ Han-shan

And even though he's the father of capitalism and wrote the most famous and maybe the best book ever on why some nations are rich and others are poor, Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments wrote as eloquently as anyone ever has on the futility of pursuing money with the hope of finding happiness. How do you reconcile that with the fact that no one did more than Adam Smith to make capitalism and self-interest respectable? That is a puzzle I try to unravel toward the end of this book. Besides the emptiness of excessive materialism, Smith understood the potential we have for self-deception, the danger of unintended consequences, the seductive lure of fame and power, the limitations of human reason, and the unseen sources of what makes our lives both so complex and yet at times so orderly. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a book of observations about what makes us tick. As a bonus, almost in passing, Smith tells us how to lead the good life in the fullest sense of that phrase. ~ Russ Roberts

Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehoods, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Breaking the winds breaks you. The power becomes a craving, like ... part of you dies and the only way to fill the emptiness is to spoil everything around you. And you can't fight it because you can't fight it because you don't want to fight it, because then you'd never be able to experience the rush again. ~ Shannon Messenger

His muscles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so that each rib and every bone in his frame were outlined cleanly through the loose hide that was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was heartbreaking, only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the red sweater had proved that. ~ Jack London

Emptiness. He saw no one, only a large chamber with pewlike rows of seats and, at the far end, a casket surrounded by flowers. Off in a small sideroom an old-fashioned reed pump organ and a few wooden folding chairs. The mortuary smelled of dust and flowers, a sweet, stale mixture that repelled him. Think of all the Iowans, the thought, who've embraced eternity in this listless room. ~ Philip K. Dick

Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old. ~ Galway Kinnell

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
-Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan. ~ Frank Herbert

When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in and helps the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end result and it is full of emptiness. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

The house was an immense place, isolated in a great wooded area. The building and the trees seemed wet, glistening dimly in the grey morning light that was much like the light of midday of Anthea. It was refreshing to his over-sensitive eyes. He liked the woods, the quiet sense of life in them, and the glistening moisture - the sense of water and of fruitfulness that this earth overflowed with, even down to the continual trilling and chirping sounds of the insects. It would be an endless source of delight compared to his own world, with the dryness, the emptiness, the soundlessness of the broad, empty deserts between the almost deserted cities where the only sound was the whining of the cold and endless wind that voiced the agony of his own, dying people..... ~ Walter Tevis

you're wrong, you will suffer for it. If you're right, you will find happiness. You have to be the one to decide. "Who are you to know?" It's your future at stake. You have to know. Freedom comes only from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue. - David Seabury ~ Harry Browne

I was feverish; I couldn't keep down food. Orma stayed by me the entire time, and I suffered the illusion that behind his skin - behind everyone's - was a hollow nothingness, an inky black void. He rolled up my sleeve to look at my arm, and I shrieked, believing he would peel back my skin and see the emptiness beneath it. ~ Rachel Hartman

I need you, Desari. I was empty without you. And that kind of emptiness eats away at you, consumes you until your soul is dark and ugly and all that matters is sating your hunger. But nothing fills the void.Nothing. Year after year you endure the emptiness until life itself is a curse hardly to be borne. And all the while the darkness, the beast in you whispers, an insidious whisper promising power from the kill,promises that wear away your belief in God,in all the things that are right and true and good.The monster inside you,so black and hungry for life, grows and grows until it has consumed everything you ever were. That is the curse born by Carpathian males, Desari. ~ Christine Feehan

Self-assertion may deceive the ignorant for a time; but when the noise dies away, we cut open the drum, and find it was emptiness that made the music. ~ Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Why had this penguin come to mean so much? That, at least, is easy to explain. Anybody who suddenly moves far from family and friends and the pets they love, feels a .. vulnerable emptiness. It is inevitable; even despite the sensational compensation. Nature upholds a vacuum and it was into this space that Juan Salvador rushed. At first, he occupied it, and then he filled and dominated it. It was not big enough for him, and so he stretched it; expanded it beyond the measure. I didn't think about it, it just happened; and then, he was gone. Of course, time moves on and new family and friends and pets jostle for position in our heart, but the vacancy left by previous occupants never fills. We keep our loved ones alive throughout our memory, our conversations and our stories, but we don't necessarily choose to reveal how much they really meant. We don't have to. Anybody who lost a pet knows. ~ Tom Michell

The music echoes in the emptiness. It reminds us where we came from and where we're bound. ~ David Mutti Clark

The triviality of American popular culture, its emptiness and gossip, accelerates this destruction of critical thought. It expands the void, the mindlessness that makes the magic, mythology, and irrationality of the Christian Right palatable. Television, the movement's primary medium, allows viewers to preoccupy themselves with context-free information. The homogenized empty chatter on the airwaves, the banal amusement and clichés, the bizarre doublespeak endlessly repeated on cable news channels and the huge spectacles in sports stadiums have replaced America's political, social and moral life, indeed replaced community itself. Television lends itself perfectly to this world of signs and wonders, to the narcissism of national and religious self-exaltation. Television discourages real communication. Its rapid frames and movements, its constant use of emotional images, its sudden shifts from one theme to an unrelated theme, banish logic and reason with dizzying perplexity. It, too, makes us feel good. It, too, promises to protect and serve us. It, too, promises to life us up and thrill us. The televangelists have built their movement on these commercial precepts. The totalitarian creed of the Religious Right has found in television the perfect medium. Its leaders know how television can be used to seduce and encourage us to walk away from dwindling, less exciting collectives that protect and nurture us. They have mastered television's imperceptible, slowly induced hypnosis. An ~ Chris Hedges

Some say crying purges. I say it drains. There's a difference. One takes the bad things from you to help close a space. The other opens you and leaves you empty ~ Dan Skinner

In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing. ~ Antonio Porchia

Although we have no actual written communications from the world of emptiness, we have some hints or suggestions about what is going on in that world, and that is, you might say, enlightenment. When you see plum blossoms or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

So it feels like a ladder I must climb up to the clouds to get away from this emptiness, to be somewhere warm. Except every time I climb it, when I get to the top, there's nothing there but quiet and cold and another ladder to climb. ~ Mikel Jollett

Self-help and those stupid proverbs, they do nothing. Soul food? It's like trying to cure starvation with a sugar cube. It might taste sweet on the lips but once it dissolves, the emptiness is still there. ~ C. Sean McGee

Ideas are easy to come by, they spring effortlessly out of the vacuity of the mind and cost nothing. When they are held and projected onto one's self or others they become a project. When the project is enacted it becomes the work, and when the work is completed it appears to be self-existent. Creation is the process of form manifesting from emptiness, where that which arises from the mind comes into existence. Yet the distance between conception and realisation may be enormous, as vast as the distance between the stars. ~ Robert Beer

I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames. ~ Annie Dillard

Our enemy within are our Core Negative Beliefs. Negative beliefs hide from the Consciousness and they get exposed by the Magic of Mindfulness and Awareness. Explore Your Core Beliefs, Challenge Existing, Train Mindfulness, Understand Beauty, Work with Emptiness, Meditate ~ Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Tahiya hote pavan nahin pani, tahiya srishti kown utpati;
tahiya hote kali nahin phula, tahiya hote garbh nahi mula;
tahiya hote vidya nahin Veda, tahiya hote shabd nahin swada;
tahiya hote pind nahin basu,
nahin dhar dharni na pavan akasu;
tahiya hote guru nahin chela, gamya agamya na panth duhela.
Sakhi: avigati ki gati ka kahown, jake gawn na thawn
gun bihuna pekhana, ka kahi lijai nawn
In that state there is no air or water, and no creation or creator; There is no bud or flower, and no fetus or semen; There is no education or Vedas, and no word or taste; There is no body or settlement, and no earth, air or space; There is no guru or disciple, and no easy or difficult path.
Sakhi: That state is very strange. I cannot explain it. It has no village or resting place. That state is without gunas (qualities). What name can on give it? ~ Kabir

such as mating, childbearing, and establishing an occupation, lead to confusion, emptiness, and psychological distress. ~ Louis Cozolino

When I'm near you, I can feel you in here."

She pressed her hand against her heart.

"And when you're gone, there's an emptiness there. And it hurts. and the pain only goes away when you're close again. Tell me, Zane, tell me what that is."

~Portia ~ Tina Folsom

I'm a migrant worker picking frozen peas,
and a clodhopper hiding behind a white sheet.
I'm a shootout at Ruby Ridge,
and a freefall of flames.
I am closed for the winter,
and crawling in my playpen.
I am cold,
and quick chatter and beautiful smiles.
I am a man missing a limb,
and lettuce and tomatoes.
I am a palace,
and fresh milk and goat cheese.
I'm the great emptiness among Cubans,
and a job that requires the auditing of truth and lies.
I'm a confounding calm that will shatter fear and complacency,
and a town full of self-defined renegades and recluses.
I'm a public execution,
and a lanky husband waiting by the checkout. ~ Brian D'Ambrosio

It is time that we allow the Word of God, not the glamorized lies of Hollywood to become the cornerstone of our convictions, thoughts, and attitude. It is time we trade the emptiness of pop culture entertainment for the real-life adventure of a Christ-built existence. Only then will truth reign and rule in our lives. Only then will our lives make an eternal impact for His glory. ~ Leslie Ludy