Better are small fish
Than an empty dish. [ Proverb ]
Empty vessels sound most. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Words are but empty thanks. [ Colley Gibber ]
Hell is empty.
And all the devils are here. [ William Shakespeare ]
Empty hands allure no hawks. [ Proverb ]
An empty belly hears nobody. [ Proverb ]
Full bellies make empty skulls. [ Proverb ]
A beggar's purse is always empty. [ Proverb ]
A beggarly account of empty boxes. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet ]
Empty chambers make foolish maids. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Know that nothing can so foolish be
As empty boldness. [ George Herbert ]
An empty sack cannot stand upright. [ Proverb ]
Solid pudding against empty praise. [ Pope ]
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream,
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem. [ Longfellow ]
An empty purse frights away friends. [ Proverb ]
Graves they say are warmed by glory;
Foolish words and empty story. [ Heine ]
A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,
Uncapable of pity, void and empty
From any dram of mercy. [ William Shakespeare ]
Empty vessels give the greatest sound. [ Proverb ]
The cup of joy is heaviest when empty. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
No man can be wise on an empty stomach. [ George Eliot ]
Better half an egg than an empty shell. [ Proverb ]
Defend me, common sense, say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old with drawing nothing up. [ William Cowper ]
Better a lean jade than an empty halter. [ Proverb ]
The greatness that would make us grave,
Is but an empty thing.
What more than mirth would mortals have?
The cheerful man's a king. [ Bickerstaff ]
Better an empty house than an ill tenant. [ Proverb ]
Grief boundeth where it falls,
Not with an empty hollowness, but weight. [ Rich. II ]
The empty vessel makes the greatest sound. [ William Shakespeare ]
Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me,
I have a soul that, like an ample shield,
Can take in all, and verge enough for more. [ John Dryden ]
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence through the empty-vaulted night.
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled! [ Milton ]
It is ill killing a crow with an empty sling. [ Proverb ]
To bed, to bed; sleep kill those pretty eyes,
And give as soft attachment to thy senses,
As infants empty of all thought. [ William Shakespeare ]
Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools. [ Socrates ]
Ye have a world of light,
When love in the loved rejoices;
But the blind man's home is the house of night.
And its beings are empty voices. [ Bulwer ]
He's so full of himself that he is quite empty. [ Proverb ]
He thought he thought, and yet he did not think,
But only echoed still the common talk,
As might an empty room. [ Walter C. Smith ]
High houses are usually empty in the upper storey. [ German Proverb ]
Friendship is but a name; fidelity but an empty name. [ Ovid ]
The account is all right, but the money-bags are empty. [ Spanish Proverb ]
He utters empty words; he utters sound without meaning. [ Virgil ]
He whose belly is full believes not him whose is empty. [ Proverb ]
The son full and tattered, the daughter empty and fine. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Trust not this hollow world; she's empty; hark, she sounds. [ Quarles ]
An empty human heart is an abyss earth's depths cannot match. [ Anne C. Lynch ]
That is but an empty purse that is full of other men's money. [ Proverb ]
Who values that anger which is consumed only in empty menaces? [ Goldsmith ]
The man whose purse is empty can cheerfully sing before the robber. [ Juvenal ]
Fullness is always quiet; agitation will answer for empty vessels only. [ Alcott ]
Poverty destroys pride. It is difficult for an empty bag to stand upright. [ A. Dumas fils ]
Often the cockloft is empty in those whom nature hath built many stories high. [ Thomas Fuller ]
When a head and a book come into collision, and one sounds empty, is it always the book? [ Lichtenberg ]
Either virtue is an empty name, or the man of enterprise justly aims at honour and reward. [ Horace ]
I know that we often tremble at an empty terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery. [ Schiller ]
There are in the human heart two cups, one for joy and one for sorrow, which empty themselves alternately. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]
Ridicule is a weak weapon when levelled at a strong mind; but common men are cowards, and dread an empty laugh. [ Tupper ]
The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty reasoning on policy, and vain conjectures on the public management. [ La Bruyere ]
As the ant does not wend her way to empty barns, so few friends will be found to haunt the place of departed wealth.
The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness. [ Carlyle ]
To write much, and to write rapidly, are empty boasts. The world desires to know what you have done, and not how you did it. [ George Henry Lewes ]
Seamen have a custom when they meet a whale to fling out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship. [ Swift ]
Indolent people, whatever taste they may have for society, seek eagerly for pleasure, and find nothing. They have an empty head and seared hearts. [ Zimmermann ]
I am tired of looking on what is, One might as well see beauty never more. As look upon it with an empty eye. I would this world were over. I am tired. [ Bailey ]
Not in nature, but in man is all the beauty and the worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for its pride. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
It is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty, that Vice can obtain a lodging. When he knocks at your door, be able to say, No room for your lordship, pass on!
[ Edward Bulwer Lytton ]
Logic invents as many fallacies as it detects; it is a good weapon, but as liable to be used in a bad as in a good cause. Many of its conclusions, more ingenious than sound, are like the recommendations of a people to keep full bottles, because a good many have been found dead with empty ones by them. [ Bovee ]
Let us now suppose that in the mind of each man there is an aviary of all sorts of birds some flocking together apart from the rest, others in small groups, others solitary, flying anywhere and everywhere. . . . We may suppose that the birds are kinds of knowledge, and that when we were children, this receptacle was empty; whenever a man has gotten and detained in the enclosure a kind of knowledge, he may be said to have learned or discovered the thing which is the subject of the knowledge: and this is to know. [ Dialogues, Theaetetus ]