Empty Promises Quotes

Why hoard away so many back-issues of People Magazine? Fashion magazines are just empty promises. You can go bankrupt blowing all your cash on expensive beauty products, but the only way you'll ever look just like the people on those glossy front covers is if you know how to use computer editing software for photographs. Besides, people who think they are ugly, are never really all that ugly anyway. People who think they are pretty, are rarely ever all that pretty. ~ Rebecca McNutt

There comes a day that we become tired of hearing empty promises and insincere apologies; not just from others, but also from ourselves. ~ Steve Maraboli

Resolutions are most often empty promises for those who have an abundance of dreams, but refuse to wake up and live them. ~ Steve Maraboli

And I pray that you no longer seek happiness from the past, but rather you set your sails forward, to a land that is pure and wonderful. I pray that you no longer stare into the shallows of empty promises, but that you dive into the depth of an ocean of guarantees. May you feel the winds of hope, and smell the scent of joy, may your heart be alive again as it was meant to be. For you are with a better captain, you are with a true sailor, a true leader; You are sailing with Christ, and He is always sure to lead us home. ~ T.B. LaBerge

Nothing changes, love. Ever. Hope is a fickle vixen sent to torment us with discontent. And I am done with her, and her empty promises, and wishes unfulfilled. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Promises to get beyond partisanship are the most perfunctory sort of campaign rhetoric, almost as empty as the partisanship itself. ~ Thomas Frank

Attraction is often mistaken to be love.
If you're in a relationship doesn't necessarily mean you're in love. And what do you do when that ephemeral attraction is long gone?
What people call break-ups are nothing more but the realization that you didn't love them at the first place ...
Shouldn't you have been more careful before making those empty promises? ~ Sanhita Baruah

President Ronald Reagan used to speak of the Soviet constitution, and he noted that it purported to grant wonderful rights of all sorts to people. But those rights were empty promises, because that system did not have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law and enforce those rights. ~ John Roberts

Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The Barry Goldwater movement excited the depths because the apocalypse was brought more near, and like millions of other whites, I had been leading a life which was a trifle too pointless and a trifle too full of guilt and my gullet was close to nausea with the empty promises of an empty liberal center. ~ Norman Mailer

The raft finally got here," he said.
Calypso snorted. Her eyes might have been red, but it was hard to tell in the moonlight. "You just noticed?"
"But if it only shows up for guys you like-"
"Don't push your luck, Leo Valdez," she said. "I still hate you."
"Okay."
"And you are not coming back here," she insisted. "So don't give me any empty promises."
"How about a full promise?" he said. "Because I'm definitely-"
She grabbed his face and pulled him into a kiss, which effectively shut him up.
For all his joking and flirting, Leo had never kissed a girl before. Well, sisterly pecks on the cheeck from Piper, but that didn't count. This was a real, full-contact kiss. If Leo had had gears and wires in his brain, they would've short-circuited.
Calypso pushed him away. "That didn't happen."
"Okay." His voice sounded an octave higher than usual. ~ Rick Riordan

The lobby of the Nelson Hotel always smells of the river
it's in the pores of the place
but this evening the smell is heavier than usual. It's a smell that makes us think of bad ideas, blown investments, forged checks, deteriorating health, stolen office supplies, unpaid alimony, empty promises, skin tumors, lost ambition, abandoned sample cases filled with cheap novelties, dead hope, dead skin, and fallen arches.
This is the kind of place you don't come to unless you've been here before and all your other options are pretty much foreclosed. It's a place where men who left their families two decades before now lie on narrow beds with pee-stained mattresses, coughing and smoking cigarettes. ~ Stephen King

When the federal government invests in education, it should support quality education and career readiness rather than institutions that make empty promises. ~ Sherrod Brown

Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart. ~ Scott Westerfeld

You'll have guys hassling you. When they get drunk, they say and do stupid shit. I'm not saying it's right," he shrugged one shoulder, "but you're not unattractive, so you'll need to deal with that."
"I'm not unattractive? Are you always this charming?"
"If you're looking for Prince Charming, it ain't me, Sunshine"
Sunshine? At least he didn't make any empty promises or pretend to be something he wasn't. "I don't believe in fairytales. Or happily ever after. Prince Charming was an evil villain in disguise, and Cinderella was the doormat he wiped his feet on. ~ Emery Rose

empty promises
left lying on the tongue
of liars
false truths
spoken in tones
that made them believable
relationships are more like hell
you're just there
trying your hardest not to get burned ~ R.H. Sin

Bopha, Sandy, floods in Pakistan, droughts in China ... How many reports from the likes of the World Bank, NASA and the International Energy Agency will it take? How many preventable catastrophes until our leaders realize that climate change will not be solved by nice speeches and empty promises? Countries like Canada and the U.S. have promised to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution and provide adequate financial support for developing countries, they have so far failed on both counts. ~ Steven Guilbeault

Political campaigns are the graveyard of real ideas and the birthplace of empty promises. ~ Teresa Heinz

Mistaken

Memories are all that I have to anchor me,
Yet they're often what leaves me unhinged,
Falling from that could I thought was so safe.
You came to a place, where – besides me –
You were uninvited.
Leaving, you promised me I could always
Count on you.

I especially miss that.

My kindred spirit,
The one who promised to love me,
Only to prove yourself a liar –
Going from Prince Charming
To the Big Bad Wolf,
Truly thinking only of yourself

Leaving me
With empty promises, alone in the dark,
Burnt from the initial spark
Of what I mistook for love,
Making my memories a false refuge.

(full poem) ~ Jenn Waterman

And just like that,the cloth was torn. was it the days, weeks of the same argument was it the months without affection, or was it simply the year and a half wasted on empty promises from both sides?I don't know what ripped it, but here I sit with my needle and thread trying to fix it knowing it will never look as beautiful as it did when we first started weaving it. ~ Brittany Swanson

Empty promises can kill a good woman. She may still breathe, but inside her heart will be dead. I'm ~ Emily Minton

Reality Tv had become the preferred drug of choice for the George Clooney obsessed housewives strung out on empty promises and splintered dreams ~ Saira Viola

Earning this moment feels a thousand times more satisfying than plying women with pretty falsehoods and empty promises. In the darkness, together on the back of a horse, it's tempting to forget the curse and pretend my life doesn't exist outside this moment. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

You can walk through the grocery store and, while the brightly colored packaging and empty promises are still mesmerizing, you can see the products for what they are. ~ Michael Moss

Words don't always work. Sometimes they come up short. Conversations can lead to conflict. There are failures of diplomacy. Some differences, for all the talk in the world, remain irreconcilable. People make empty promises, go back on their word, say things they don't believe. But connection, with ourselves and others, is the only way we can live. ~ Alena Graedon

If economic progress means that we become anonymous cogs in some great machine, then progress is an empty promise. ~ Charles Handy

Maybe all the broken dreams and empty promises the world offered are just reflections of what is within us. Maybe one day we will learn to accept ourselves for all the faults sleeping beneath the footprints we leave behind. ~ Robert M. Drake

If you ask people to do things and they usually don't get around to them, stop asking yourself, "What's the matter with people these days?" Instead, ask yourself, "What's the matter with me? What am I doing or failing to do that causes people to give me empty promises?" ~ Ed Bliss

My wings," the faerie whispered.
"You'll get them back."
The Faerie struggled to open his eyes. "You swear?"
"Yes," I breathed. The faerie managed a slight smile and closed his eyes again. My mouth trembled. I wished for something else to say, something more to offer him than my empty promises. The first false vow I'd ever sworn. But Tamlin began speaking, and I glanced up to see him take the faerie's other hand.
"Cauldron save you," he said, reciting the words of a prayer that was probably older than the moral realm. "Mother hold you. Pass through the gates, and smell that immortal land of milk and honey. Fear no evil. Feel no pain." Tamlin's voice wavered, but he finished. "Go, and enter eternity. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Soldiers' bellies are not satisfied with empty promises and hopes. ~ Peter The Great

I don't fall for words, I fall for action because words always carry empty promises but one step at a time is the beginning of fulfilment. Don't say just do it! Don't announce just show it! Don't gloat just prove it! ~ Euginia Herlihy

Why do we need to be pardoned? What are we to be pardoned for? For not dying of hunger? For not accepting humbly the historic burden of disdain and abandonment? For having risen up in arms after we found all other paths closed? For not heeding the Chiapas penal code, one of the most absurd and repressive in history? For showing the rest of the country and the whole world that human dignity still exists even among the world's poorest peoples? For having made careful preparations before we began our uprising? For bringing guns to battle instead of bows and arrows? For being Mexicans? For being mainly indigenous? For calling on the Mexican people to fight by whatever means possible for what belongs to them? For fighting for liberty, democracy and justice? For not following the example of previous guerrilla armies? For refusing to surrender? For refusing to sell ourselves out? Who should we ask for pardon, and who can grant it? Those who for many years glutted themselves at a table of plenty while we sat with death so often, we finally stopped fearing it? Those who filled our pockets and our souls with empty promises and words? Or should we ask pardon from the dead, our dead, who died "natural" deaths of "natural causes" like measles, whooping cough, break-bone fever, cholera, typhus, mononucleosis, tetanus, pneumonia, malaria and other lovely gastrointestinal and pulmonary diseases? Our dead, so very dead, so democratically dead from sorrow because no one did anything, because t ~ Subcomandante Marcos

Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more willpower or drive, but because they know productivity is a game played against a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty that can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push-ups. ~ David McRaney

MURRY: Resolutions are a complete waste of time. They're just this meaningless ritual, empty promises we make and break within hours of each other. ~ Hillary DePiano

I tried!" She screamed, her eyes filled with raw emotion. All Sarah could do is stand there, speechless at this outburst. Sunni whirled on her heels, pacing back and forth in the narrow confines of the bedroom. "I tried as hard as I fucking could!" She continued, her voice thick with tears and heavy with anger ."I did the best I could! I loved you, no matter what. I loved every part of you, and I accepted who you were! I didn't like some parts, but you know what? It's who you fucking are! That's what you do as a partner!"

She turned on Sarah now, her finger pointed in her direction, tears spilling over as the emotion got the best of her. "I loved you through it all, and what did you do? You abandoned me. You made empty promises to me, ones that filled my heart with hope. Even in my darkest times, you made it about you. Is that who you are, Sarah?!" H

Sunni's voice dropped now, a whisper of shattered glass. "You left me, you abandoned me. Even in my greatest need, I was still there for you. And yet, you couldn't do the same for me. Why? Am I not good enough for you?"

Sarah moved to speak, her throat closing with raw emotion. Sunni shook her head, her hand up to halt Sarah. "No, don't speak. Don't lie to me. No more lies, no more bullshit. If I was enough, then why weren't you there?" She let out a laugh now, a sound that was reminiscence to raw sandpaper. "I needed you, time and time again. I was there for you, because it was my job. It was my ~ Zoe Santana

He made no empty promises, nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied by more powerful forces in the world than himself. ~ Mario Puzo

The mayor will be remembered because of his refusal to accept political favors and he kept his campaign promises. ~ Alicia Mendoza

... bleak, wind-swept fens and moors; empty fields with broken walls and gates hanging off their hinges; a black, ruined church; an open grave; a suicide buried at a lonely crossroads; a fire of bones blazing in the twilit snow; a gallows with a man swinging from its arm; another man crucified upon a wheel; an ancient spear plunged into the mud with a strange talisman, like a little leather finger, hanging from it; a scarecrow whose black rags blew about so violently in the wind that he seemed about to leap into the grey air and fly towards you on vast black wings ... ~ Susanna Clarke

I dreamed I saw you dead in a place by the water. A ravaged place. All flat and empty and wide open. And you were covered in some kind of binding. Like a mummy. Something white and reflective, from head to toe. And the light shone on you. Oh, how it shone on you! It glanced off you, and it was like a pure, bright silver. The wind was singing. It sang: you have suffered enough. You have suffered enough. Then death came and he kissed you. Lightly. Gently. Upon the lips. There is nothing beyond, he whispered, only me, only me. There is nothing beyond. Only me. ~ Nicola Barker

When you feel thankful, you can be appreciative for a moment, then not at all the next. It seems the tank is full, then it becomes empty, and the cycle continues. If you don't feel the same gratitude for a moment, know that it's possible in the next moment that comes around. ~ J.R. Rim

And maybe because I struggle to learn certain lessons, this one has taken me years and years to learn: You can't make too much space for a father like mine in your life. Because he'll elbow his way in and stretch the corners wide, and when he leaves all you have is the oversized empty--the gap in your heart where a parent should be ~ Elizabeth Acevedo

Let Him empty and transform you ;and afterwards fill the chalice of your hearts to the brim, that you in your turn, may give of your abundance. Seek Him. Knowledge will make you strong as death. Love Him trustfully without looking back, without fear. Believe that Jesus and Jesus alone is life. Serve Jesus, casting aside and forgetting all that troubles or worries you, make loved the love that is not loved. ~ Mother Teresa

One thinks of lard as a kind of pure high saturated fat but it is only 41 % saturated, while it is mostly (47 %) MUFA, predominantly oleic acid, the main fat in olive oil. So it is a question of whether you think that lard is half full of SFA or half empty. ~ Richard David Feinman

I look out the window, a jammed-up feeling growing inside. Am I going to cry? Or is it something else? My eyes are dry, but I feel like something wants to burst out of me. I focus on the empty road outside. Hold back. Hold it in. Keep your mouth shut, Jenna. Keep it shut. Shut. Shut. ~ Mary E. Pearson

To demand promises is to invite disappointment -Hester ~ Jonathan Auxier

You kill me, Rose," he said melodramatically. "Every day is agony without you. Empty. Alone. I pine for you, wondering if you're even still alive. ~ Richelle Mead

He felt empty, broken, defeated. ~ Pamela Clare

I realize belatedly that sending sharks to the aid of humans is a stupid idea. When one of the men tries to kick a tiger shark in the eye-and how could I blame him?-I tell the sharks to retreat. They've done all they can do, and I won't let them be abused for their efforts.
After a few more minutes, I see a small, chubby pair of legs struggling nearby. The owner of the legs can't be older than a toddler. I scoop him up and keep him at the surface. He's adorable really, with rounded cheeks and a snotty nose and brown eyes with lashes that would make a supermodel jealous. Close to us, a woman who I assume is his mother is crying frantically and calling out to the empty waves around her. I swim him over to her and deliver the little guy into her arms. "He swallowed a good part of the ocean, but otherwise he'll be fine," I tell her, knowing that she doesn't understand.
She clutches him to her and trembles. I swim two life jackets over to her and help her strap them on to her and the baby boy. She nods, and despite the language barrier, I can tell that she's thanking me. Which makes me feel like zoo dirt, since I helped put her and her child in this predicament. If she knew that, she would probably be trying to choke the life from me. And I would probably let her. ~ Anna Banks

I constantly pack my pockets full of worthless trinkets, and in such misguided gorging I leave my heart empty and my soul emaciated because I have forgotten everything but trinkets. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

And she loved a man who was made out of nothing. A few hours without him and right away she'd be missing him with her whole body, sitting in her office surrounded by polyethylene and concrete and thinking of him. And every time she'd boil water for coffee in her ground-floor office, she'd let the steam cover her face, imagining it was him stroking her cheeks, her eyelids and she'd wait for the day to be over, so she could go to her apartment building, climb the flight of stairs, turn the key in the door, and find him waiting for her, naked and still between the sheets of her empty bed. ~ Etgar Keret

There'll always be small, bitter people ready to follow some charismatic leader who promises them peace and happiness through justified violence and the killing of scapegoats. ~ Simon R. Green

It is a strange thing how quickly our bodies die. How fragile a force our presence is. In an instant the soul is gone - leaving an empty, insignificant vessel in its stead. I have read of those sent to the gallows and guillotines of Europe. I have read of the great war of ages past and men slaughtered by the tens of thousands. And we give but fleeting consideration to such deaths, for it is our nature to banish such thoughts. But in doing so, we forget that they were each as alive as we, and the one length of rope - or bullet - or blade, took the whole of their lives in that one, fragile instant. Took their earliest days as swaddled infants, and their grayest unfulfilled futures. When one think of how many souls have suffered this fate in all of history - of the untold murders of untold men, women and children.. it is too much to bear. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

We have ample evidence that the Lord is able to guide. The promises cover every imaginable situation. All we need to do is to take the hand he stretches out. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Travel's greatest purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. ~ William Hazlitt

I believe in Making the Most of Now!
I don't know what tomorrow Promises,
But I do have this Hour, this Minute, this Second..
To Smile. ~ Somya Kedia

If the day is done, if birds sing no more, if the wind has flagged tired, then draw the veil of darkness thick upon me, even as thou hast wrapt the earth with the coverlet of sleep and tenderly closed the petals of the drooping lotus at dusk. From the traveller, whose sack of provisions is empty before the voyage is ended, whose garment is torn and dustladen, whose strength is exhausted, remove shame and poverty, and renew his life like a flower under the cover of thy kindly night. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

God doesn't slack his promises because of our sins or hasten them because of our righteousness. He pays no attention to either. ~ Martin Luther

Ignorance is not a virtue, nor empty thoughts a pot of gold. ~ Patrick Brigham

I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged, damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room. ~ May Sarton

The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful. ~ Nadine Gordimer

You're like Thomas was. You are the only person I care about, the only person who reminds me I am alive. Not empty. And not alone. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word ad immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would only pretend not to look at the other, if he slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the the beautiful room is empty. Franz Kafka (in a letter to Milena Jesenska) ~ Edmund White

A person who wrote badly did better than a person who does not write at all. A bad writing can be corrected. An empty page remains an empty page. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

I don't know how it happened. Nobody does. There are only theories, empty rhetoric and doomsday prophecies. None of them are right, but none of them are completely wrong, either. They all have a grain of truth. All I know is where I was and what I was doing when it happened. ~ Summer Lane

An empty house can be as lonely as a full hotel" he said at length."The trouble is that it is less impersonal. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

The federal government has made explicit and implicit promises to millions of people, but has put no money aside in order to keep those promises. Some of you may wonder where Bernie Madoff got the idea for his Ponzi scheme. Clearly he was studying federal entitlement policy. ~ John C. Goodman

It used to bother me that we would leave little trace, but now I have never bene more glad about anything. I will wake up in the empty mornings with the absence of you, and I will think, Glad, glad, glad, and it will ring like a bell. ~ Sophie Mackintosh

Then a slow mile later such places started thinning out, in favor of vacant lots and piney woods, and a sense of empty vastness ahead. ~ Lee Child

Diane turned and pointed in the direction of Evan's cubicle. But instead of a cubicle, there was a fern and an empty chair beneath a framed photo of a cloud. She wasn't sure which cloud it was. ~ Joseph Fink

Today the vacuum [of space] is not regarded as empty. It is a sea of dynamic energy, like the spray of foam near a turbulent waterfall. ~ Harold E. Puthoff

In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty
or, it may be, war and want
but we must vote for a man. ~ B.F. Skinner

So long there are women around, a cheater will cheat against his promise. ~ Anthony Liccione

You'll never be a mature Christian until you understand that God remembers his promises and forgets your sins. ~ Kevin DeYoung

A kiss.
One-point-three seconds--and gone.
He touched his metal mouth even though he could not feel--neither physical touch nor emotional. Ana had never kissed him on the mouth before. One the cheek, yes, when she'd drunk too much of Wick's Cercian ale. But never on the mouth. Her words echoed through his processors like a virus.
I'll always come back for you. I promise on iron and stars.
It was more than a promise--it was an oath. Unbreakable. Strong like iron and steady like stars.
It was said that such promises could never be broken; the Goddess would not allow it. The probability of a supernatural binding was less than one percent, but the vow stuck with him all the same.
Because Ana had never promised on iron and stars before. ~ Ashley Poston

If you don't like to make excuses or apologies, stop making promises. ~ Evan Esar

If the European grows accustomed not to rule, a generation and a half will be sufficient to bring the old continent, and the whole world along with it, into mortal inertia, intellectual sterility, universal barbarism. It is only the illusion of rule, and the discipline of responsibility which it entails, that can keep Western minds in tension. Science, art, technique, and all the rest live on the tonic atmosphere created by the consciousness of authority. If this is lacking, the European will gradually become degraded. Minds will no longer have the radical faith in themselves which impels them, energetic, daring, tenacious, towards the capture of great new ideas in every order of life. The European will inevitably become a day-to-day man. Incapable of creative, specialized effort, he will always be falling back on yesterday, on custom, on routine. He will turn into a commonplace, conventional, empty creature, like the Greeks of the decadence and those of the Byzantine epoch. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset