“He who has seen everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with.”

Source: A Moveable Feast

6th Public Talk, Saanen (28 July 1970) 'The Mechanical Activity of Thought" in The Impossible Question (1972) Part I, Ch. 6
1970s
Context: The whole of Asia believes in reincarnation, in being reborn in another life. When you enquire what it is that is going to be born in the next life, you come up against difficulties. What is it? Yourself? What are you? a lot of words, a lot of opinions, attachments to your possessions, to your furniture, to your conditioning. Is all that, which you call the soul, going to be reborn in the next life? Reincarnation implies that what you are today determines what you will be again in the next life. Therefore behave! — not tomorrow, but today, because what you do today you are going to pay for in the next life. People who believe in reincarnation do not bother about behavior; t all; it is just a matter of belief, which has no value. Incarnate today, afresh not in the next life! Change it now completely, change with great passion, let the mind strip itself of everything, of every conditioning, every knowledge, of everything it thinks is "right" — empty it. Then you will know what dying means; and then you will know what love is. For love is not something of the past, of thought, of culture; it is not pleasure. A mind that has understood the whole movement of thought becomes extraordinarily quiet, absolutely silent. That silence is the beginning of the new.

H.R. Haldeman, White House chief of staff statement about Felt's suspected leaks in 1972 to Richard Nixon, to which Nixon replied, "Why in the hell would he do that?"

Qui sait tout souffrir peut tout oser.
Variant: He who knows how to suffer everything can dare everything.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 176.

Review of Their Finest Hour by Winston Churchill, New Leader (14 May 1949)
Context: It is difficult for a statesman who still has a political future to reveal everything that he knows: and in a profession in which one is a baby at 50 and middle-aged at seventy-five, it is natural that anyone who has not actually been disgraced should feel that he still has a future.

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 909
Context: There are three kinds of devotees: superior, mediocre, and inferior. The inferior devotee says, "God is out there." According to him God is different from His creation. The mediocre devotee says: "God is the Antaryami, the Inner Guide. God dwells in everyone's heart." The mediocre devotee sees God in the heart. But the superior devotee sees that God alone has become everything; He alone has become the twenty-four cosmic principles. He finds that everything, above and below, is filled with God.

"The Sign and Emptiness," p. 9
The Sign and Its Children (2000), Sequence: “The Supreme Sign”

Chi tutto vuole, nulla non ha.
Act I., Scene II. — (Lucido Tolto).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 273.
I Lucidi (published 1549)

Source: Magic Strikes