“My witness is the empty sky.”

— Jack Kerouac

Some of the Dharma (1997)

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Jack Kerouac 266

American writer 1922–1969

Related quotes

“The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

from: English Wikipedia, Joan Miró, 1958, as quoted in Twentieth-Century Artists on Art, ed. Dore Ashton, 1986
1940 - 1960

“I talk to God but the sky is empty.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Draft of letter to Richard Sassoon (1950-02-19)
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
Variant: I talk to God, but the sky is empty.

“I'm empty, here at the edge of the sky.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Poem on Night" (trans. Jan W. Walls), in Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, eds. Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo (1975), p. 139

“No foreign sky protected me,
no stranger's wing shielded my face.
I stand as witness to the common lot,
survivor of that time, that place.
— 1961”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Translated in Poems of Akhmatova (1973) by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward
No, not under a foreign heavenly-cope, and
Not canopied by foreign wings
I was with my people in those hours,
There where, unhappily, my people were.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
No, not under the vault of another sky,
not under the shelter of other wings.
I was with my people then,
there where my people were doomed to be.
Translator unknown.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987)

“As empty vessels make the loudest sounds, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Often attributed to Plato, it cannot be found in any of his writings. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=796
Misattributed

“The silvery tree opens
to an empty sky —
maybe it is better
that I am not your husband.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Variant translations:
The willow in the empty sky
spread her transparent fan
perhaps it were better
that I not be
your wife.
"Memory of the Sun" (alternate translation by Paula Goodman)
Thinking Of The Sun (1911)