Empty Quotes

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

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- 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

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

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

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

Once I knew only darkness and stillness ...
my life was without past or future ...
but a little word from the fingers of another
fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness,
and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.
- Helen Keller

Once you know yourself as a genuine seeker,
and when your own inner chamber is quite enlightened,
then comes the natural unfoldment of pure love and compassion
and a genuine desire to serve others.
- Rod Stryker

Through humor, you can soften some
of the worst blows that life delivers.
And once you find laughter,
no matter how painful your situation might be,
you can survive it.
- Bill Cosby

The journey between what you once were
and who you are now becoming
is where the dance of Life really takes place.
- Barbara De Angelis

Shake structures.
School yourself.
Look twice at a thing,
once upside down.
Answer yourself clearly.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in a while
and watch your answers change.
- Richard Bach

Failure does not exist.
Failure is simply someone else's opinion of how
a certain act should have been completed.
Once you believe that no act must be performed
in any specific other-directed way,
then failing becomes impossible.
- Wayne Dyer

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
- William Shakespeare

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose.
All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
- Helen Keller

Count your blessings. Once you realize
how valuable you are and how much you have going for you,
the smiles will return, the sun will break out,
the music will play, and you will finally
be able to move forward the life that God intended
for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
- Og Mandino

I expect to pass through this world but once.
Any good therefore that I can do,
or any kindness that I can show to my fellow-creature,
let me do it now.
Let me not defer or neglect it,
for I shall not pass this way again.
- William Penn

You only meet your once in a lifetime friend ...
once in a lifetime.
- Little Rascals

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

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we want to direct our lives,
we must take control of our consistent actions.
It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives,
but what we do consistently.
- Anthony Robbins

Sister is probably the most competitive
relationship within the family,
but once the sisters are grown,
it becomes the strongest relationship.
- Margaret Mead

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time;
you can even fool some of the people all of the time;
but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
- Abraham Lincoln

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person,
"Always do what you are afraid to do."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once we doubt ourselves, success slips beyond our grasp.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The world moves, and ideas that were
once good are not always good.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

You need to make a commitment,
and once you make it,
then life will give you some answers.
- Les Brown

The whole world is a cyclone.
But once you have found the center, the cyclone disappears.
This nothingness is the ultimate peak of consciousness.
- Osho

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea,
never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Once you say you're going to settle for second,
that's what happens to you in life.
- John F. Kennedy

Everyone is a genius at least once a year;
a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
- Georg Lichtenberg

For those who do not think,
it is best at least to rearrange
their prejudices once in a while.
- Luther Burbank

You only live once, and once is enough
if you play your cards right.
- the movie Interiors (1978)

We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe,
nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws,
but the smallest insect, we wish
to be created at once by special act.
- Charles Darwin

Where there is an observatory and a telescope,
we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.
- Henry David Thoreau

We come this way but once.
We can either tiptoe through life
and hope we get to death without being badly bruised
or we can live a full, complete life achieving
our goals and realizing our wildest dreams.
- Bob Proctor

I once had a rose named after me
and I was very flattered.
But I was not pleased to read
the description in the catalogue:
no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

How could youths better learn to live
than by at once trying the experiment of living?
- Henry David Thoreau

Keep close to Nature's heart...
and break clear away, once in awhile,
and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.
Wash your spirit clean.
- John Muir

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
- Woody Allen

I have the right to love many people at once
and to change my prince often.
- Anais Nin

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment.
The more experiments you make the better.
What if they are a little coarse,
and you may get your coat soiled or torn?
What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled
in the dirt once or twice.
Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once you respect yourself, there is no longer
any reason to disrespect anyone else.
Once you are confident of your own worthiness,
the worthiness of others ceases to be an issue.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along,
because once I have persuaded him, he will stick.
If I scare him, he will stay just as long
as he is scared, and then he is gone.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Once you have mastered time,
you will understand how true it is that
most people overestimate what
they can accomplish in a year -
and underestimate what
they can achieve in a decade!
- Tony Robbins

When someone you love dies,
you don't lose them all at once.
You lose them in pieces over time
- the movie Simon Birch

Oh, if only God would give me some sign.
If He would just speak to me once. Anything.
One sentence. Two words. If He would just cough.
- the movie Love and Death

If you have an important point to make,
don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver.
Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again.
Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
- Winston Churchill

Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing.
You don't win once in a while,
you don't do things right once in a while,
you do them right all the time.
Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
- Vince Lombardi

If you plan for a year, plant a seed.
If for ten years, plant a tree.
If for a hundred years, teach the people.
When you sow a seed once, you will reap a single harvest.
When you teach the people, you will reap a hundred harvests.
- Kuan Chung

Confucius might have said:
Once frightened, twice smelly in armpit.
- Anonymous humor

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
- Albert Einstein

We would like to live as we once lived,
but history will not permit it.
- John F. Kennedy

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort,
should, when young, consider that he may one day become old,
and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.
- Joseph Addison

Mind can never be intelligent - only no-mind is intelligent.
Only no-mind is original and radical.
Only no-mind is revolutionary - revolution in action.
The mind gives you a sort of stupor.
Burdened by the memories of the past,
burdened by the projections of the future,
you go on living - at the minimum.
You dont live at the maximum.
Your flame remains very dim.
Once you start dropping thoughts,
the dust that you have collected in the past,
the flame arises - clean, clear, alive, young.
Your whole life becomes a flame,
and a flame without any smoke.
That is what awareness is.
- Osho

One cannot have wisdom without perspective,
but once gaining perspective, one attains wisdom.
Wisdom is the ability to view every situation
as each person who is in any way affected
by that situation might view it.
Wisdom benefits from having a knowledge of history,
and therefore a historical perspective,
as well from as having the perspective of imagination -
the realm of the what-might-be
inhabited by futurists and science-fiction writers.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life repeats itself mindlessly -
unless you become mindful, it will go on repeating like a wheel.
That's why Buddhists call it the wheel of life and death,
the wheel of time.
It moves like a wheel: birth is followed by death,
death is followed by birth;
love is followed by hate, hate is followed by love;
success is followed by failure,
failure is followed by success. Just see!
If you can watch just for a few days,
you will see a pattern emerging, a wheel pattern.
One day, a fine morning, you are feeling so good and so happy,
and another day you are so dull,
so dead that you start thinking of committing suicide.
And just the other day you were so full of life,
so blissful that you were feeling thankful to God,
that you were in a mood of deep gratefulness,
and today there is great complaint
and you don't see the point why one should go on living...
And it goes on and on, but you don't see the pattern.
Once you see the pattern, you can get out of it.
- Osho

If you do something once,
people will call it an accident.
If you do it twice, t
hey call it a coincidence.
But do it a third time, and
you've just proven a natural law.
- Grace Hopper

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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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