Empty Vessels Quotes

An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.

Which is why we say I can't live without you meaning your life gives life to me, who am otherwise an empty vessel, nameless.

Let’s say you are an empty vessel. So what? What’s wrong with that?” Eri said. “You’re still a wonderful, attractive vessel. And really, does anybody know who they are? So why not be a completely beautiful vessel? The kind people feel good about, the kind people want to entrust with precious belongings.

Rest and self-care are so important. When you take time to replenish your spirit, it allows you to serve others from the overflow. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.

Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends.

Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.

Perhaps it is becoming clearer why I felt no romance when you told me that you carried my last letter with you, everywhere you went, for months on end, unopened. This may have served some purpose for you, but whatever it was, surely it bore little resemblance to mine. I never aimed to give you a talisman, an empty vessel to flood with whatever longing, dread, or sorrow happened to be the day's mood. I wrote it because I had something to say to you.

I felt as though the vessel if my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer.

Someone smashed a flutterfler and without even thinking she touched her Stone and used Wyrd to piece its broken body back together. She filled its empty vessels with dreams and it became the stuff it used for blood. It brushed her cheek with its wings, then flew off -- dancing in the hot air.

I made you into my private Christ, supplicated with my own dark devotions. Nothing existed beyond the range of your exacting gaze, not even me. I was simply a non-entity when you weren't looking at me, an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the sweet water of your attention. A woman can't live like that, my Lord. No one can. Don't ask me why I did it. God, forgive me. Christ, forgive me.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound'.

We are the bones of this city, the heart, the womb. The hidden structure and architecture behind the beautiful facades. We are unseen yet leaned upon, vessels yet not empty, the home for our families. The hopes of our city are thrust upon us, and we will be punished if we fail.

Marginalia Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.

The Lord bestows his blessings there, where he finds the vessels empty.

The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness.

But explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge. A Freudian would claim to know what they have and I lack, but intelligence is not situated in the crotch—even if you can write one of Virginia Woolf’s long mellifluous musical sentences about the subtle subjugation of women in the snow with your willie.

Sometimes it's exhausting for me to simply walk into the house. I try and calm myself, remember that I've lived alone before. Sleeping by myself didn't kill me then and will not kill me now. But this what loss has taught me of love. Our house isn't simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it's gone, nothing is whole again.

A child is not an empty vessel.... to be formed in whatever way the parent thinks fit. They are born with their own hearts and they cannot be made otherwise, no matter what love a man lavishes on them.

Every time you empty your vessel of that energy, fresh new energy comes flooding in.

But now I feel like a receptacle -- an empty vessel to be filled at his whim.

He said he didn’t even exist without you. That he was an empty vessel and that you filled him and owned him until he didn’t know where he ended and you began.

You weren’t meant for the ice, you weren’t made for the pain. The world that lives inside of me was not the world you were meant to contain. You were meant for castles and living in the sun. Thecold running through me should have made you run. Yet you stay. Holding onto me, yet you stay, reachingout a hand that I push away. The cold is not meant for you yet you stay, you stay, you stay. When I know it’s not right for you. The ice fills my veins and I can’t feel the pain, yet you’re there like the heat that sends me screaming in fear. I can’t feel the warmth I need to feel the ice. I want to hold it all in and numb it till I can’t feel the knife. Your heat threatens to melt it all and I know I can’t bear the pain if the ice melts away. So I push you away and I scream out your name and I know I can’t need you yet you give anyway and I run wishing you would run too. Yet you stay. Holding onto me yet you stay reaching out a hand that I push away. The cold is not meant for you yet you stay, you stay, you stay. When I know it’s not right for you. The blackness is my shield. I pull it closer still. You’re the light that I hide from, the light that I hate. You’re the light to this darkness and I can’t let you stay. I need the dark around me like I need the ice in my veins. The cold is my healer. The cold is my safe place. Youaren’t welcome with your heat you don’t belong beside me. I hate you yet I love, I don’t want you yet I need you. The dark will always be my cloak and you are the threat to unveil my pain, so leave. Leave and erase the memories. I need to face the life that’s meant for me. Don’t stay and ruin all my plans. You can’t have my soul I’m not a man. The empty vessel I dwell in is not meant to feel the heat you bring. I push you away and I push you away. Yet you stay.

Without his mate to share his life, he was but a screen for events and circumstances to pass through. He was npt even empty, for he was no vessel to hold even the thinnest of air. He lived, though was not truly alive

Because I have no sense of self. I have no personality, no brilliant color. I have nothing to offer. That’s always been my problem. I feel like an empty vessel. I have a shape, I guess, as a container, but there’s nothing inside. I just can’t see myself as the right person for her. I think that the more time passes, and the more she knows about me, the more disappointed Sara will be, and the more she’ll choose to distance herself from me.

You cannot serve from an empty vessel.

I wonder from these thousand of "me's", which one am I? Listen to my cry, do not drown my voice I am completely filled with the thought of you. Don't lay broken glass on my path I will crush it into dust. I am nothing, just a mirror in the palm of your hand, reflecting your kindness, your sadness, your anger. If you were a blade of grass or a tiny flower I will pitch my tent in your shadow. Only your presence revives my withered heart. You are the candle that lights the whole world and I am an empty vessel for your light. Rumi - "Hidden Music

I reached out my hand, England's rivers turned and flowed the other way... I reached out my hand, my enemies's blood stopt in their veins... I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies' heads like a flock of starlings; My enemies crumpled like empty sacks. I came to them out of mists and rain; I came to them in dreams at midnight; I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn; When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood... The rain made a door for me and I went through it; The stones made a throne for me and I sat upon it; Three kingdoms were given to me to be mine forever; England was given to me to be mine forever. The nameless slave wore a silver crown; The nameless slave was a king in a strange country... The weapons that my enemies raised against me are venerated in Hell as holy relics; Plans that my enemies made against me are preserved as holy texts; Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell's sacristans and placed in a vessel of silver and ivory. I gave magic to England, a valuable inheritance But Englishmen have despised my gift Magic shall be written upon the sky by the rain but they shall not be able to read it; Magic shall be written on the faces of the stony hills but their minds shall not be able to contain it; In winter the barren trees shall be a black writing but they shall not understand it... Two magicians shall appear in England... The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me; The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction; The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache; The second shall see his dearest posession in his enemy's hand... The first shall pass his life alone, he shall be his own gaoler; The second shall tread lonely roads, the storm above his head, seeking a dark tower upon a high hillside... I sit upon a black throne in the shadows but they shall not see me. The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it; The stones shall make a throne for me and I shall sit upon it... The nameless slave shall wear a silver crown The nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country...

An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge.

Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel; yet it is its center that makes it useful. You can mould clay into a vessel; yet, it is its emptiness that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows from the walls of a house; but the ultimate use of the house will depend on that part where nothing exists. Therefore, something is shaped into what is; but its usefulness comes from what is not.

I have been cheated out of being treated like a human being. In my reflection I saw an empty vessel. They had cheated me and I was desperate to make the sharp pain in my head stop.

People aren't empty vessels for you to fill up with your daydreams.

Until you divest yourself of the notion that you are a collection of needs, an empty vessel that someone else must fill up, there will be no safe place to harbor yourself, no safe shore to reach. As long as you think mostly of getting, you will have nothing real to give.

As a captain whose vessel is about to crash on the rocks empties its souls of doubt, so are the hesitant useful for throwing off of an enterprise nearing its end: blame must be cast in failure, profits divided easily in success.

But one does not liberate someone by alienating them. Authentic liberation--the process of humanization--is not another deposit to be made in a person. Liberation is a praxis: action and reflection upon the world in order to transform it. Those truly committed to the cause of liberation can accept neither the mechanistic concept of consciousness as an empty vessel to be filled, nor the use of banking [pedagogical] methods of domination (propaganda, slogans--deposits) in the name of liberation.

When you empty out the vessel, you also empty out all the crap floating around in there. The additives. The impurities. It sure feels good. It's a whole body, whole-minded enema.

Empty vessels can give nothing more than empty advice.

He's on the verge of it--we can tell. He is on the verge of finding that very hard truth--that it will never be complete, or feel complete. This is usually something you only have to learn once--that just like there is no such thing as forever, there is no such thing as total. When you're in the thrall of your first love, this discovery feels like the breaking of all momentum, the undermining of all promise. For the past year, Neil has assumed that love was like a liquid pouring into a vessel, and that the longer you loved, the more full the vessel became, until it was entirely full. The truth is that over time, the vessel expands as well. You grow. Your life wides. And you can't expect your partner's love alone to fill you. There will always be space for other things. And that space isn't empty as much as it's filled by another element. Even though the liquid is easier to see, you have to learn to appreciate the air.

We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence.

And there's no saying what heady potions we won't concoct, what meanings, myths, manias we won't imbibe in order to convince ourselves that reality is not an empty vessel.

...explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge.

Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel

The Prophet said: “Islam began as something strange, and it shall return to being something strange as it began, so give glad tidings to the strangers.” [Sahih Muslim] By being ‘strange’ to this dunya, we can live in it, without being of it. And it is through that detachment that we can empty the vessel of our heart in preparation for that which nourishes it and gives it life. By emptying our heart, we prepare it for its true nourishment: God.

She was called the Barren Queen, but I never met anyone less empty. For if one is wanting of a child, then by nature their heart is overfilled with love -- overflowing, yearning for a new vessel to hold that love, like spilling water. There are some who call her a monster. Some who call her mad. If longing is madness, then none of us are sane.

We had all been broken in that moment - broken open by shock and grief and anger and fear. I didn't know how or when, but this opening could lead to healing. After all, only an empty vessel can be filled by grace; but to get there, we had to help each other rise while we shed the same tears. We had to get up and start again.

Still, children seem like empty vessels who pick up on everything and are so affected by their surroundings. I mean, that's what they tell me in therapy and it seems to be true. Stuff I don't consciously remember affects my behavior every day. I see that now

Maybe her silence was another way to express scorn. There is a saying: empty vessels make the loudest sounds. Maybe that was the principal behind Naomi’s silence. Maybe she was emptied, spent, angry. Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 31

Do not fear emptiness. It is the dwelling place of possibility. Nothing can be added to a vessel that is already full. ~Malachi

The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips.

Mr Hodge, ignorance should be like an empty vessel waiting to be filled at the well of truth – not a cabinet of vulgar curios.

The Republican Party is an empty vessel unless we imbue it with values.

Don’t kill yourself just because you think and feel you are empty. God needs empty vessels to fill!

empty vessels make the most noise. It is true. The best adventurers and climbers, and the most successful people I know in life, are all great listeners, and they don’t talk too much.

Hand, nobody told me about the weight. Why didn't our parents tell us about the weight? —What weight? —The fucking weight, Hand. How does the woman Ingres live? The one from Marrakesh? If we're vessels, and we are, then we, you and I, are overfull, and that means she's at the bottom of a deep cold lake. How can she stand the hissing of all that water? —We are not vessels; we are missiles. —We're static and we're empty. We are overfull and leaden. —We are airtight and we are missiles and all-powerful.

Lovers dream of one more embrace. One more kiss. One act of love, no matter how small. For in loving, lover and beloved emptied themselves. Now, they look for their oasis like men engulfed in flames. Even filled to the brim, they will never satiate. For they continue to leak, these cracked vessels. How else did love seep through?

Obedience is a knife that cuts the cord of bondage. Silence is a hammer that shatters the walls of speech. Stillness is strength; pain a soft bed. Put down your basin; emptiness is the only vessel.

My experiences as a Montessori teacher have led me to realize that our goal as educators is not to impart facts to children as though they were empty vessels to be filled, but to open their eyes so they can exclaim joyfully, "Wow, look at what I am becoming! I've got to know more!" (from Walking in Wonder)

Sometimes I worry my ideas might dry up', he says, an odd tone to his voice. 'I'm not sure who I'd be without them. Sometimes I think I'm really just an empty vessel floating about, downloading ideas and not much else.

That was how I imagined my anatomy back then, brain like tangled yarn, body like an empty vessel, private parts like some strange foreign country. But I was careful shutting the door, of course. I didn’t really want to die.

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.

Pirates do not use to set upon poor empty vessels; and beggars need not fear the thief. Those that have most of God, and are most rich in grace— shall be most assaulted by Satan, who is the greatest and craftiest pirate in the world.

It is a strange thing how quickly the body dies. How fragile a force our presence is. In an instant the soul is gone—leaving an empty, insignificant vessel in its stead.

Empty the vessel of hope and faith and trust and you can fill it with anything you like. They

It is the impermanence of the body that has convinced me of the eternality of the soul. Physics tells us that energy never dies, it merely assumes a different form. I never feel this more deeply than when gazing upon a dead body, a vessel emptied of its life force, a force that must surely now exist elsewhere.

Maureen Dowd - that catty, third-rate, wannabe sorority queen. She's such an empty vessel. One pleasure of reading the New York Times online is that I never have to see anything written by Maureen Dowd! I ignore her hypertext like spam for penis extenders.

Examples of fractals are everywhere in nature. They can be found in the patterns of trees, branches, and ferns, in which each part appears to be a smaller image of the whole. They are found in the branch-like patterns of river systems, lightning, and blood vessels. They can be seen in snowflakes, seashells, crystals, and mountain ranges. We can even see the holographic and fractal-like nature of reality in the structure of the Universe itself, as the clusters of galaxies and dark matter resemble the neurons in our brain, the mycelium network of fungi, as well as the network of the man-made Internet.

I've got my own moral compass to steer by A guiding star beats a spirit in the sky And all the preaching voices - Empty vessels ring so loud As they move among the crowd Fools and thieves are well disguised In the temple and market place Like a stone in the river Against the floods of spring I will quietly resist Like the willows in the wind Or the cliffs along the ocean I will quietly resist I don't have faith in faith I don't believe in belief You can call me faithless I still cling to hope And I believe in love And that's faith enough for me I've got my own spirit level for balance To tell if my choice is leaning up or down And all the shouting voices Try to throw me off my course Some by sermon, some by force Fools and thieves are dangerous In the temple and market place Like a forest bows to winter Beneath the deep white silence I will quietly resist Like a flower in the desert That only blooms at night I will quietly resist

But I don't have any confidence ." "Why not ?" "Because I have no sense of self . I have no personality , no brilliant color . I have nothing to offer . That's always been my problem . I feel like an empty vessel . I have a shape , I guess , as a container but there's nothing inside .

For the past year, Neil has assumed that love was like a liquid pouring into a vessel, and that the longer you loved, the more full the vessel became, until it was entirely full. The truth is that over time, the vessel expands as well. You grow. Your life widens. And you can’t expect your partner’s love alone to fill you. There will always be space for other things. And that space isn’t empty as much as it’s filled by another element. Even though the liquid is easier to see, you have to learn to appreciate the air.

If a man approaches a fact in the world around him with a judgment arising from his previous experiences, he shuts himself off by this judgment from the quiet, complete effect which this fact can have on him. The learner must be able each moment to make himself a perfectly empty vessel into which the new world flows. Knowledge is received only in those moments in which every judgment, every criticism coming from ourselves, is silent. For example, when we meet a person, the question is not at all whether we are wiser than he. Even the most unreasoning child has something to reveal to the greatest sage. And if he approach the child with his prejudgment, be it ever so wise, he pushes his wisdom like a dulled glass in front of what the child ought to reveal to him.

Not a soul But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd Some tricks of desperation; all but mariners Plung'd in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel; Then all afire with me the King's son Ferdinand With hair up staring ( then like reeds, not hair) Was the first man that leap'd; cried Hell is empty, And all the devils are here.

This rum is half gone. WHY is the rum gone? I will TELL you why the rum is gone. This half-empty cask, which as of last night was full of rum bound for England, rum entrusted to this vessel to be carried in her hold until we reach our destination, rum intended to be sold to the taverns and cellars of England, to slake English thirsts is gone because several members of this crew that stands before me, this same crew of misbegotten scurvy sea dogs, crept down into the hold and GUZZLED it!

Giving my love to you was like finding a convenient vessel into which to pour the thing I had no use for, just as you had found a bin in the yard for your unwanted empties.

Vessels knocked together for hour upon hour, like bones, like someone infinitely stupid and patient at the door of an empty house.

As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest blabbers

On the day when death will knock at thy door what wilt thou offer to him? Oh, I will set before my guest the full vessel of my life---I will never let him go with empty hands. All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days and summer nights, all the earnings and gleanings of my busy life will I place before him at the close of my days when death will knock at my door.

You think Mother sent us out here to have visions?' Ralph asked. 'Maybe to gain strength and holiness by a purging process',Glen said. 'The casting away of things is symbolic,you know.Talismanic. When you cast away things, you're also casting away the self related others that are symbolically related to those things. You are starting a cleaning out process. You begin to empty the vessel.

You weren’t meant for the ice, you weren’t made for the pain. The world that lives inside of me was not the world you 75 Existence were meant to contain. You were meant for castles and living in the sun. The cold running through me should have made you run. Yet you stay. Holding onto me, yet you stay, reaching out a hand that I push away. The cold is not meant for you yet you stay, you stay, you stay. When I know it’s not right for you. The ice fills my veins and I can’t feel the pain, yet you’re there like the heat that sends me screaming in fear. I can’t feel the warmth I need to feel the ice. I want to hold it all in and numb it till I can’t feel the knife. Your heat threatens to melt it all and I know I can’t bear the pain if the ice melts away. So I push you away and I scream out your name and I know I can’t need you yet you give anyway and I run wishing you would run too. Yet you stay. Holding onto me yet you stay reaching out a hand that I push away. The cold is not meant for you yet you stay, you stay, you stay. When I know it’s not right for you. The blackness is my shield. I pull it closer still. You’re the light that I hide from, the light that I hate. You’re the light to this darkness and I can’t let you stay. I need the dark around me like I need the ice in my veins. The cold is my healer. The cold is my safe place. You aren’t welcome with your heat you don’t belong beside me. I hate you yet I love, I don’t want you yet I need you. The dark will always be my cloak and you are the threat to unveil my pain, so leave. Leave and erase the memories. I need to face the life that’s meant for me. Don’t stay and ruin all my plans. You can’t have my soul I’m not a man. The empty vessel I dwell in is not meant to feel the heat you bring. I push you away and I push you away. Yet you stay.

Opening myself to my own love and to life's tough loveliness not only was the most delicious, amazing thing on earth but also was quantum. It would radiate out to a cold, hungry world. Beautiful moments heal, as do real cocoa, Pete Seeger, a walk on old fire roads. All I ever wanted since I arrived here on earth were the same things I needed as a baby, to go from cold to warm, lonely to held, the vessel to the giver, empty to full. You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing you are worth profound care, even when you're dirty and rattled. Who knew?

I was tired of being your Magdalene. I was tired of waiting expectantly at your tomb every night for you to rise and bring light into my world once again. I was tired of groveling on my knees and washing blood off your heels with my hair and tears. I was tired of having the air sucked out of my lungs every time your eyes cut right to the heart of me. I was tired of the circumference of the whole universe living in your circled arms, of the spark of life hiding in your kiss, of the power of death lying in wait in your teeth. I was tired of carrying around the weight of a love like worship, of the sickly-warm rush of idolatry coloring my whole world. I was tired of faithfulness. I made you into my private Christ, supplicated with my own dark devotions. Nothing existed beyond the range of your exacting gaze, not even me. I was simply a non-entity when you weren't looking at me, an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the sweet water of your attention. A woman can't live like that, my lord. No one can. Don't ask me why I did it. God, forgive me. Christ, forgive me.

It is a strange phenomenon, how absence is the only authentic vessel of the past, how otherwise it is forgotten, overlooked for its continuity and perdurability—every sensory detail of the past breathes through its emptiness the way the light of a match illuminates the darkness; otherwise all is darkness, all is presence, everything in its place and thus unnoticed, whereas the past is missing, the part cut out of the photograph, the part the present attempts to seal over with the future, seeking to close the hole, pandering to the illusion of movement and change when in reality all of life is in flux, particle for particle, atom for atom, void for void, thought for thought.

We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence! The very capacity for good would go out of us. For, tell the most impassioned orator, suddenly, that his wig is awry, or his shirt-lap hanging out, and that he is tickling people by the oddity of his person, instead of thrilling them by the energy of his periods, and you would infallibly dry up the spring of his eloquence. That is a deep and wide saying, that no miracle can be wrought without faith--without the worker's faith in himself, as well as the recipient's faith in him. And the greater part of the worker's faith in himself is made up of the faith that others believe in him.m

Daniel Ziskind had once learned that time is created through deeds of true kindness. Days and hours and years are not time, but merely vessels for it, and too often they are empty. The world stands still, timeless and empty, until an act of generosity changes it in an instant and sends it soaring through arcs of rich seasons, moment after spinning moment of racing beauty. And then, with a single unkind deed, a single withheld hand, time ceases to exist.

The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space (for the axle), that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out (from the walls) to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space (within), that its use depends. Therefore, what has a (positive) existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not that for (actual) usefulness.

As you can see,” Daisy said, “one glass is filled with soap water, one with clear, and one with blue laundry water. The other, of course, is empty. The glasses will predict what kind of man you will marry.” They watched as Evie felt carefully for one of the glasses. Dipping her finger into the soap water, Evie waited for her blindfold to be drawn off, and viewed the results with chagrin, while the other girls erupted with giggles. “Choosing the soap water means she will marry a poor man,” Daisy explained. Wiping off her fingers, Evie exclaimed good-naturedly, “I s-suppose the fact that I’m going to be m-married at all is a good thing.” The next girl in line waited with an expectant smile as she was blindfolded, and the glasses were repositioned. She felt for the vessels, nearly overturning one, and dipped her fingers into the blue water. Upon viewing her choice, she seemed quite pleased. “The blue water means she’s going to marry a noted author,” Daisy told Lillian. “You try next!” Lillian gaveher a speaking glance. “You don’t really believe in this, do you?” “Oh, don’t be cynical—have some fun!” Daisy took the blindfold and rose on her toes to tie it firmly around Lillian’s head. Bereft of sight, Lillian allowed herself to be guided to the table. She grinned at the encouraging cries of the young women around her. There was the sound of the glasses being moved in front of her, and she waited with her hands half raised in the air. “What happens if I pick the empty glass?” she asked. Evie’s voice came near her ear. “You die a sp-spinster!” she said, and everyone laughed. “No lifting the glasses to test their weight,” someone warned with a giggle. “You can’t avoid the empty glass, if it’s your fate!” “At the moment I want the empty glass,” Lillian replied, causing another round of laughter. Finding the smooth surface of a glass, she slid her fingers up the side and dipped them into the cool liquid. A general round of applause and cheering, and she asked, “Am I marrying an author, too?” “No, you chose the clear water,” Daisy said. “A rich, handsome husband is coming for you, dear!” “Oh, what a relief,” Lillian said flippantly, lowering the blindfold to peek over the edge. “Is it your turn now?” Her younger sister shook her head. “I was the first to try. I knocked over a glass twice in a row, and made a dreadful mess.” “What does that mean? That you won’t marry at all?” “It means that I’m clumsy,” Daisy replied cheerfully. “Other than that, who knows? Perhaps my fate has yet to be decided. The good news is that your husband seems to be on the way.” “If so, the bastard is late,” Lillian retorted, causing Daisy and Evie to laugh.

I was tired of being your Magdalene. I was tired of waiting expectantly at your tomb every night for you to rise and bring light into my world once again. I was tired of groveling on my knees and washing blood off your heels with my hair and tears. I was tired of having the air sucked out of my lungs every time your eyes cut right to the heart of me. I was tired of the circumference of the whole universe living in your circled arms, of the spark of life hiding in your kiss, of the power of death lying in wait in your teeth. I was tired of carrying around the weight of a love like worship, of the sickly-warm rush of idolatry coloring my whole world. I was tired of faithfulness. I made you into my private Christ, supplicated with my own dark devotions. Nothing existed beyond the range of your exacting gaze, not even me. I was simply a none-entity when you weren't looking at me, an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the sweet water of your attention. A woman can't live like that, my lord. No one can. Don't ask me why I did it. God, forgive me. Christ, forgive me.

Le mal du pays.” The quiet, melancholy music gradually gave shape to the undefined sadness enveloping his heart, as if countless microscopic bits of pollen adhered to an invisible being concealed in the air, ultimately revealing, slowly and silently, its shape. This time the being took on the shape of Sara—Sara in her mint-green short-sleeved dress. The ache in his heart returned. Not an intense pain, but the memory of intense pain. What did you expect? Tsukuru asked himself. A basically empty vessel has become empty once again. Who can you complain to about that? People come to him, discover how empty he is, and leave. What’s left is an empty, perhaps even emptier, Tsukuru Tazaki, all alone. Isn’t that all there is to it?

We are never done, then, with conscience. Make up your mind what to do with it, Brutus; make up your mind what to do with it, Cato. It is without end, being God. We throw into this bottomless pit a lifetime of labor, we throw into it our fortune, we throw into it our success, we throw into it our liberty or our country, we throw into it our well-being, we throw into it our repose, we throw into it our joy. More! More! More! Empty the vessel! Tip out the urn! We are forced in the end to throw in our hearts. Somewhere in the mists of the old underworld there is a barrel like that.

Self care is any action you purposefully take to improve your physical, emotional or spiritual well being. Too often, we do not make time for sufficient self care because we’re too busy taking care of others. Life’s demands at home, in our community and at work can take our lives out of balance. Self care can be getting more rest, eating healthier food, spending more time in thoughtful reflection, being kinder to yourself, smiling more, playing, or engaging in any activity that renews you. By making time for self care, you prepare yourself to be your best so you can share your gifts with the world. Rest and self-care are so important. When you take time to replenish your spirit, it allows you to serve others from the overflow. Self care isn’t selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel. © Eleanor Brownn

A cleansed vessel must be ruled with the opposite from which it was emptied. If fear was cast out, faith must be added. If corruption was cast out, purity must fill its place. If hatred and bitterness were cast out, love and forgiveness must occupy. In other words, one must fill himself with the character and nature of Christ Himself. When a man is completely occupied with matters of the Holy Spirit, there can be no room for evil. “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). The filling of the house is accomplished by living a disciplined Christian life. Let

Fasting in each of the senses, strengthens the grip of life. After silence, each uttering as music. After hunger, each tasting, delicious. After smell, each flower, a heavenly scent. After darkness, each sunray, as meeting the angels. After winter, delicious heavenly scent of angelic music, warming of heart, elevation of soul. After great effort, blissful rest. Fast from heat, love, company, intimacy, curiosity. Fast in all things. Occasionally deprive yourself of life, and truly you will live. Let each machine in each factory have its rest and maintenance, for they will strengthen in efficiency. Recovery.

Firmly planted. Not fallen from on high: sprung up from below. Ochre, the color of burnt honey. The color of a sun buried a thousand years ago and dug up only yesterday. Fresh green and orange stripes running across its still-warm body. Circles, Greek frets: scattered traces of a lost alphabet? The belly of a woman heavy with child, the neck of a bird. If you cover and uncover its mouth with the palm of your hand, it answers you with a deep murmur, the sound of bubbling water welling up from its depths; if you tap its sides with your knuckles, it gives a tinkling laugh of little silver coins falling on stones. It has many tongues: it speaks of the language of clay and minerals, of air currents flowing between canyon walls, of washerwomen as they scrub, of angry skies, of rain. A vessel of baked clay: do not put it in a glass case alongside rare precious objects. It would look quite out of place. Its beauty is related to the liquid that it contains and to the thirst that it quenches. Its beauty is corporal: I see it, I touch it, I smell it, I hear it. If it is empty, It must be filled; if it is full, it must be emptied. I take it by the shaped handle as I would take a woman by the arm, I lift it up, I tip over a pitcher into which I pour milk or pulque - lunar liquids that open and close the doors of dawn and dark, waking a sleeping.

Perhaps suspense has been one of the most trying features of my case. Just as I have unclasped my hand from my dear Ernest's; just as I have let go my almost frantic hold of my darling children; just as heaven opened before me and I fancied my weariness over and my wanderings done; just then almost every alarming sympathy would disappear and life recall me from the threshold of heaven itself. Thus I have been emptied from vessel to vessel, till I have learned that he only is truly happy who has no longer a choice of his own and lies passive in God's hand. Even now, no one can foretell the issue of this sickness. We live a day at a time, not knowing what shall be on the morrow. But whether I live or die, my happiness is secure, and so, I believe, is that of my beloved ones.

For the first time in his life, Midhat wished he were more religious. Of course he prayed, but though that was a private mechanism it sometimes felt like a public act, and the lessons of the Quran were lessons by rote, one was steeped in them, hearing them so often. They were the texture of his world, and yet they did not occupy that central, vital part of his mind, the part that was vibrating at this moment, on this train, rattling forward while he struggled to hold all these pieces. As a child he had felt some of the same curiosity he held for the mysteries of other creeds—for Christianity with its holy fire, the Samaritans with their alphabets—but that feeling had dulled while he was still young, when traditional religion began to seem a worldly thing, a realm of morals and laws and the same old stories and holidays. They were acts, not thoughts. He faced the water now along the coast, steadying his gaze on the slow distance, beyond the blur of trees pushing past the tracks, on the desolate fishing boats hobbling over the waves. He sensed himself tracing the lip of something very large, something black and well-like, a vessel which was at the same time an emptiness, and he thought, without thinking precisely, only feeling with the tender edges of his mind, what the Revelation might have been for in its origin. Why it was so important that they could argue to the sword what it meant if God had hands, and whether He had made the universe. Underneath it all was a living urgency, that original issue of magnitude; the way several hundred miles on foot could be nothing to the mind, Nablus to Cairo, one thought of a day’s journey by train, but placed vertically that same distance in depth exposed the body’s smallness and suddenly one thought of dying. Did one need to face the earth, nose to soil, to feel that distance towering above? There was something of his own mortality in this. Oh then but why, in a moment of someone else’s death, must he think of his own disappearance?

Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way. The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, "This is our man." "What the devil do you do in that galley there?" said Monsieur Defarge to himself; "I don't know you." But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter. "How goes it, Jacques?" said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. "Is all the spilt wine swallowed?" "Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge. When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. "It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur Defarge, "that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?" "It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned. At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips. "Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?" "You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge. This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat. "Hold then! True!" muttered her husband. "Gentlemen--my wife!" The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it. "Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly upon her, "good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor- fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard close to the left here," pointing with his hand, "near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!" They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word. "Willingly, sir," said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with him to the door. Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing.

My house is full of books. I suppose that I have read all of them, bar reference books and poetry collections in which I will not have read every poem. I have forgotten many, indeed most. At some point, I have emptied each of these into that insatiable vessel, the mind, and they are now lost somewhere within. If I reopen a book, there is recognition--oh yes, I've been here--but to have the contents again, familiar, new-minted, I would have to read right through. What happens to all this information, this inferno of language? Where does it go? Much, apparently, becomes irretrievable sediment; a fair amount, the significant amount, becomes that essential part of us--what we know and understand and think about above and beyond our own immediate concerns. It has become the life of the mind. What we have read makes us what we are--quite as much as what we have experienced and where we have been and who we have known. To read is to experience. I can measure out my life in books. They stand along the way like signposts: the moments of absorption and empathy and direction and enlightenment and sheer pleasure.

Andreevich. “Don’t be angry with me, Misha. It’s stuffy in here, and hot outside. I don’t have enough air.” “You can see the vent window on the floor is open. Forgive us for smoking. We always forget that we shouldn’t smoke in your presence. Is it my fault that it’s arranged so stupidly here? Find me another room.” “Well, so I’m leaving, Gordosha. We’ve talked enough. I thank you for caring about me, dear comrades. It’s not a whimsy on my part. It’s an illness, sclerosis of the heart’s blood vessels. The walls of the heart muscle wear out, get thin, and one fine day can tear, burst. And I’m not forty yet. I’m not a drunkard, not a profligate.” “It’s too early to be singing at your funeral. Nonsense. You’ll live a long while yet.” “In our time the frequency of microscopic forms of cardiac hemorrhages has increased greatly. Not all of them are fatal. In some cases people survive. It’s the disease of our time. I think its causes are of a moral order. A constant, systematic dissembling is required of the vast majority of us. It’s impossible, without its affecting your health, to show yourself day after day contrary to what you feel, to lay yourself out for what you don’t love, to rejoice over what brings you misfortune. Our nervous system is not an empty sound, not a fiction. It’s a physical body made up of fibers. Our soul takes up room in space and sits inside us like the teeth in our mouth. It cannot be endlessly violated with impunity.

On the next floor below are the abdominal and spine cases, head wounds and double amputations. On the right side of the wing are the jaw wounds, wounds in the joints, wounds in the kidneys, wounds in the testicles, wounds in the intestines. Here a man realizes for the first time in how many places a man can get hit. Two fellows die of tetanus. Their skin turns pale, their limbs stiffen, at last only their eyes live—stubbornly. Many of the wounded have their shattered limbs hanging free in the air from a gallows; underneath the wound a basin is placed into which drips the pus. Every two or three hours the vessel is emptied. Other men lie in stretching bandages with heavy weights hanging from the end of the bed. I see intestine wounds that are constantly full of excreta. The surgeon’s clerk shows me X-ray photographs of completely smashed hipbones, knees and shoulders. A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is. I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing;—it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?

March 10 MORNING “In my prosperity I said I shall never be moved.” — Psalm 30:6 “MOAB is settled on his lees, he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel.” Give a man wealth; let his ships bring home continually rich freights; let the winds and waves appear to be his servants to bear his vessels across the bosom of the mighty deep; let his lands yield abundantly: let the weather be propitious to his crops; let uninterrupted success attend him; let him stand among men as a successful merchant; let him enjoy continued health; allow him with braced nerve and brilliant eye to march through the world, and live happily; give him the buoyant spirit; let him have the song perpetually on his lips; let his eye be ever sparkling with joy — and the natural consequence of such an easy state to any man, let him be the best Christian who ever breathed, will be presumption; even David said, “I shall never be moved;” and we are not better than David, nor half so good. Brother, beware of the smooth places of the way; if you are treading them, or if the way be rough, thank God for it. If God should always rock us in the cradle of prosperity; if we were always dandled on the knees of fortune; if we had not some stain on the alabaster pillar; if there were not a few clouds in the sky; if we had not some bitter drops in the wine of this life, we should become intoxicated with pleasure, we should dream “we stand;” and stand we should, but it would be upon a pinnacle; like the man asleep upon the mast, each moment we should be in jeopardy. We bless God, then, for our afflictions; we thank Him for our changes; we extol His name for losses of property; for we feel that had He not chastened us thus, we might have become too secure. Continued worldly prosperity is a fiery trial. “Afflictions, though they seem severe, In mercy oft are sent.

Sensuality is for you, not about you. It’s for you in a sense that you are allowed to indulge all of your senses and taste the goodness of this world and beyond. It’s also for you in a sense that you’re allowed to curate and express yourself in an authentic way (i.e. in the way you dress, communicate, live, love, play, etc.). However, sensuality is not ABOUT you, it’s about those to whom you were brought here to touch and inspire. It’s about the joy and pleasure you’re here to bring. You didn’t come here for yourself nor empty-handed, but you came here bearing special gifts. You were brought here to be a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures. Your passion is an indication of the sensual gift(s) you were endowed with before you made your grand entry into this world. Your divine mandate now is to exploit every sensual gift you have to the fullest whether it’s music, photography, boudoir or fashion modeling, etc. If you have a love for fashion, always dress impeccably well like my friend Kefilwe Mabote. If you have a love for good food and wine, create culinary experiences the world has never seen before like chef Heston Blumenthal whom I consider as one of the most eminent sensual innovators in the culinary field. Chef Heston has crafted the most sensually innovative culinary experience where each sense has been considered with unparalleled rigour. He believes that eating is a truly multi-sensory experience. This approach has not only led to innovative dishes like the famous bacon and egg ice cream, but also to playing sounds to diners through headphones, and dispersing evocative aromas with dry ice. Chef Heston is indeed a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures in his own right and field. So, what sensual gift(s) are you here to use? It doesn’t have to be a big thing. For instance, you may be a great home maker. That may be an area where you’re endowed with the most sensual innovative abilities than any other area in your life. You need to occupy and shine your light in that space, no matter how small it seems.