Quotes about Emptiness

I believe we should pray that God will take possession of our lives totally and completely. We should pray that we will be emptied of self— self-love, self-will, self-ambition—and be placed completely at His disposal.

Some years ago I was invited to be on a television talk show with one of the most famous personalities in America. Afterward she took me aside and told of the emptiness in her life. "My beauty is gone," she said, "I am getting old, I'm living on alcohol, and I have nothing to live for.

Much of the world believes little or nothing. People are broad but shallow. Agnosticism, anxiety, emptiness, and meaninglessness have gripped much of the world—and even the church... By contrast, our Pilgrim forebears stand as shining examples of men who were narrow but deep, certain of what they believed, unswerving in their loyalty, and passionately dedicated to the God they trusted, and for whom they would willingly have died.

Some of the most miserable people I have ever met have been people who are very popular with the public, but down inside are empty and miserable.

In our day many people are broad but shallow. Agnosticism, anxiety, and emptiness have gripped much of our world.

The line of lovelessness is not drawn between speaking and doing, but between speaking and doing in the truth, and speaking and doing in emptiness. Truth turns word-love into deed-love.

If all we mean by our love is a craving to be loved, we are in a very deplorable state.

I am convinced that without a gutlevel experience of our profound spiritual emptiness, it is not possible to encounter the living God.

We seem to have a fear of empty spaces. The philosopher Spinoza called this a horror vacui. We want to fill up what is empty. Our lives stay very full. And when we are not blinded by busyness, we fill our inner space with guilt about things of the past or worries about things to come.

Rembrandt portrays the father as the man who has transcended the ways of his children. His own loneliness and anger may have been there, but they have been transformed by suffering and tears. His loneliness has become endless solitude, his anger boundless gratitude. This is who I have to become. I see it as clearly as I see the immense beauty of the father's emptiness and compassion. Can I let the younger and the elder son grow in me to the maturity of the compassionate father?

When we are spiritually deaf, we are not aware that anything important is happening in our lives. We keep running away from the present moment, and we try to create experiences that make our lives worthwhile. So we fill up our time to avoid the emptiness we otherwise would feel.

Every relationship carries within its center a holy vacancy, a space that is for the first Love, God alone.