#emptiness

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

#beauty

When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. It just didn't make any difference. It was pointless to the tree, it was pointless to every man in his outfit, pointless to everybody in the whole world. Who cared? It was not pointless only to him; and when he was dead, when he ceased to exist, it would be pointless to him too. More important: Not only would it be pointless, it would have been pointless all along. This was an obscure and rather difficult point to grasp. Understanding of it kept slipping in and out on the edges of his mind. It flickered, changing its time sense and tenses. At those moments when he understood it, it left him with a very hollow feeling. ↗

— James Jones

#emptiness #pointlessness #understanding #change

The objects I chose were designed to hold something, but I didn't fill them up. They remained empty. They were little symbolic shrines to thirst. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#thirst #design

At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void. ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#emptiness #pessoa #stoic #void #education

‎''Just think, never to be glad or disappointed. Never to like anyone and get cross at him and forgive him. Never to sleep or feel cold, never to make a mistake and have a stomach-ache and be cured from it, never to have a birthday party, drink beer, and have a bad conscience... How terrible. ↗

— Tove Jansson

#forgiveness

The inner woman is the source of healing. The inner woman is the source of silence. The inner woman is the source of love. The inner woman is the source of belongingness with life. Embracing the inner man and woman is to discover our inner roots and wings. ↗

— Swami Dhyan Giten

#freedom #inner-man-and-woman #joy #life #love

Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana? Try to imagine this: You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#arctic #emptiness #farmer #hysteria-siberiana #madness

It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#life #life

Grief ... gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#grief #senselessness #time #life

Become totally empty Quiet the restlessness of the mind Only then will you witness everything unfolding from emptiness ↗

— Lao Tzu

#wit