A Quote by Emile Durkheim

One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist.

Emile Durkheim

Quote Topics

Attracted Being Cannot Change Contemplation Does Emptiness Exist Existence Feels Inclination Increasingly Infinity Long Name Nature Only Pleasure Remain Satisfied Vain Without

Quote Author

Emile Durkheim
French - Sociologist
April 15, 1858 - November 15, 1917

One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain, one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature.

Emile Durkheim

I told myself: 'I am surrounded by unknown things.' I imagined man without ears, suspecting the existence of sound as we suspect so many hidden mysteries, man noting acoustic phenomena whose nature and provenance he cannot determine. And I grew afraid of everything around me – afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment that everything is limitless, what remains? Does emptiness actually not exist? What does exist in this apparent emptiness?

Guy de Maupassant

The highest truth is to delete, not to add. To get rid of the things you believe in now. So empty yourself out totally and completely. All of your ideas, your feelings, all have to be emptied out of you. When you become totally and completely empty there is nothing you have to do to fill it up again. Emptiness is realization. Emptiness is Brahman. Emptiness is the Self. Emptiness is your real nature.

Robert Adams

We see that God has implanted in all things a natural desire to exist with the fullest measure of existence that is compatible with their particular nature. To this end they are endowed with suitable faculties and activities; and by means of these there is in them a discernment that is natural and in keeping with the purpose of their knowledge, which ensures their natural inclination serving its purpose and being able to reach its fulfilment in that object towards which it is attracted by the weight of its own nature.

Nicholas of Cusa

It is completely incomprehensible to us how God can reveal himself and to some extent make himself known in created beings: eternity in time, immensity in space, infinity in finite, immutability in change, being in becoming, the all, as it were, in that which is nothing. This mystery cannot be comprehended; it can only be gratefully acknowledged.

Herman Bavinck

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave. What you WANT is irrelevant, what you've CHOSEN is at hand. You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.

Deepak Chopra

Does there exist an Infinity outside ourselves? Is that infinity One, immanent and permanent, necessarily having substance, since He is infinite and if He lacked matter He would be limited, necessarily possessing intelligence since He is infinite and, lacking intelligence, He would be in that sense finite. Does this Infinity inspire in us the idea of essense, while to ourselves we can only attribute the idea of existence? In order words, is He not the whole of which we are but the part?

Victor Hugo

Most human beings are completely out of touch with their spiritual nature and with the inner dimensions that exist within themselves. They don't realize each person has a soul, an inner core of light and intelligence as vast as the ten thousand worlds, whose inner nature is emptiness, ecstasy and happiness.

Frederick Lenz

The Muslim community is completely fractured - it doesn't really exist anymore; the only place it does exist is online.

Reza Aslan

Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.

Blaise Pascal

My whole effort is to help you to disappear. My whole effort is to help you to be so empty: anatta - non-being. Because if you are, you will remain in trouble. If you are, you will remain limited. If you are, there will be a definition to your being - and you will never be overflowing. Only emptiness can be overflowing, only emptiness can be at ease. Only emptiness can be life abundant. To be, the way passes through non-being. If you really want to be, you will have to drop all concepts of your being. You will have to disappear, by and by. You will have to melt into nothingness.

Rajneesh

No creature can attain a higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist.

Ananda Coomaraswamy

So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear.

Friedrich Nietzsche

This harmony that human intelligence believes it discovers in nature - does it exist apart from that intelligence? No, without doubt, a reality completely independent of the spirit which conceives it, sees it or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so exterior as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us. But what we call objective reality is, in the last analysis, that which is common to several thinking beings, and could be common to all; this common part, we will see, can be nothing but the harmony expressed by mathematical laws.

Henri Poincare

From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh in.