Top 100 No Substance Quotes
#1. What has no substance can penetrate what has no opening.
Laozi
#2. Though (the Tao) is uncreated itself, it creates all things. Because it has no substance, it can enter into where there is no space. Exercising by returning to itself, winning victories by remaining gentle and yielding, it is softer than anything, and therefore overcomes everything hard.
Laozi
#3. Because he believed that if you wanted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of filler that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty.
Jodi Picoult
#4. [Race] had no substance, like a shadowy shape that terrifies in the dark but vanishes by the light of day.
Nayantara Sahgal
#5. One disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound - strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow.
Charles Dickens
#6. Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.
John Henry Newman
#7. Except God no substance can be granted or conceived.. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.
Baruch Spinoza
#8. Within each and every one of us is a divine power that needs no substance or anything external to know bliss.
Wayne Dyer
#9. What will the U.S. senators have to say if there is, as many over here and in the rest of the world suspect, no substance to the allegations against my father and me?
Kojo Annan
#10. Some people just chase the glittery stuff and they have no substance to their life whatsoever. Actually all they really want is power. But they pretend they're interested in enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#11. People think of me as a mannequin, all show and no substance.
Brooke Shields
#12. Your past is your shadow. It has form but no substance, except in the places you allow it to touch you. (
Tananarive Due
#14. To see through the illusion of duality, remember that fear and darkness have no substance in themselves, for they do not indicate the presence of a second universal force, but are only names given to the one Light unperceived.
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
#15. When we understand the true nature of mind, we start to see these thoughts merely as thoughts instead of engaging with them. They arise, abide, and pass. They have no substance and certainly no power unless we git it to them.
David Michie
#16. I hate the word famous because it has no substance.
Harry Styles
#17. The Tao of Jen was very much the Tao of hiding everything that didn't look good. The Tao of Jen is wearing a cocktail dress with underwear with holes in it. The Tao of Jen is all style and no substance.
Jen Lancaster
#18. Within the classic mode, however, the romantic has some appearances of his own. Frivolous, irrational, erratic, untrustworthy, interested primarily in pleasureseeking. Shallow. Of no substance. Often a parasite who cannot of will not carry his own weight. A real drag on society.
Robert Pirsig
#19. Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.
Victor Hugo
#20. Diplomats and politicians, blowing with the wind. No substance, no beliefs, no real friendships.
Andrew Crofts
#21. When sunlight falls on a crystal, lights of all colors of the rainbow appear; yet they have no substance that you can grasp. Likewise, all thoughts in their infinite variety are utterly without substance.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
#22. If you look up the word "gab" in the dictionary, it's insignificant of importance, of no substance. That's what gab is.
Malachy McCourt
#23. There are living systems; there is no living "matter." No substance, no single molecule, extracted and isolated from a living being possess, of its own, the aforementioned paradoxical properties. They are present in living systems only; that is to say, nowhere below the level of the cell.
Jacques Monod
#24. Thoughts of themselves have no substance; let them arise and pass away unheeded. Thoughts will not take form of themselves, unless they are grasped by the attention; if they are ignored, there will be no appearing and no disappearing.
Asvaghosa
#25. The gentlest thing in the world
overcomes the hardest thing in the world.
That which has no substance
enters where there is no space.
This shows the value of non-action.
Teaching without words,
performing without actions:
that is the Master's way.
Lao-Tzu
#26. I won't take parts where the female character has no substance.
Margot Robbie
#27. I just remember that everything looked the same-all style and no substance
Paula Scher
#28. There is no substance which is not a poison; all are poisonous. Only the dose determines.
Philippus Theophrastus
#29. My mother's journals are a shadow play with mine. I am a woman wedded to words. Words cast a shadow. Without a shadow there is no depth. Without a shadow there is no substance. If we have no shadow, it means we are invisible. As long as I have a shadow, I am alive.
Terry Tempest Williams
#30. It's the glitches and twists, I thought, that make this universe unique and compelling. Without flaws, there would be
no depth, no substance.
A.M. Jenkins
#31. Oh, and Mr. Montgomery? I think I counted about four dozen important-sounding words and almost no substance at all in that explanation. I don't think you should close the door on your diplomatic career entirely.
Elle Lothlorien
#32. Mari was what was known as an underachiever, which even an underachiever knew was sociology code for "overfailer." She was famous in the Lore for the simple fact that one day she might be worth being famous. All hype-no substance. That was Mari.
Kresley Cole
#33. I do not admire greatness that has no substance.
Mary Balogh
#34. My hair is pure. It stands for purity because no foreign chemicals or substances has ever touched my hair.
CM Punk
#35. There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,
is, in form as well as substance, poetry; and a volume which should contain the condensed wisdom of mankind need not have one rhythmless line.
Henry David Thoreau
#36. Now many such things may be done without intitling the people to rise in arms. A gross, flagrant, and palpable abuse no doubt will do it, as if they should be required to pay a tax equal to half or third of their substance.
Adam Smith
#37. I can see now that a concept or even a feeling makes no sense unless out of our substance we spin around it a web of references, of relationships, of values.
Ella Maillart
#38. Protein bars, protein flapjacks, protein granola, protein ice cream and protein coconut water ... To look at the health-food aisles, you'd think that protein was a substance no one could overeat. Even bread now comes in protein-enriched form.
Bee Wilson
#39. I think I enjoy playing human beings no matter the substance of their character.
Ezra Miller
#40. There is neither spirit nor matter in the world. The stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could have produced the human molecule.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
#41. I was a blank canvas, no thoughts, no emotions, no needs or desires, just a square of white floating through a loud, chaotic world, and life would paint me with color and substance, smear and spread and colorize me.
Jasinda Wilder
#42. Beyond the edge of the world there's a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.
Haruki Murakami
#43. No creature hath the like resemblance to the divine nature, as light hath. He doth not only dwell in light, but he is light. Light is a pure, bright, clear, spiritual, unmixed substance. God is infinitely so.
Matthew Henry
#44. The Gita does not decide for us. But if, whenever faced with a moral problem, you give up attachment to the ego and then decide what you should do, you will come to no harm. This is the substance of the argument which Shri Krishna has expanded into 18 chapters.
Mahatma Gandhi
#45. When asked Who I Am, the only answer possible is: I am the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything
just as you are.
Suzanne Segal
#46. If you are going to say a thing the substance of which is a big pill for your readers to swallow, there is no use in frightening them at the beginning by the form.
Ethel Lilian Voynich
#47. American government is not dominated by engineers, it is dominated by lawyers. Engineers are interested in substance and building things; lawyers are interested in process and rights and getting the ideology correctly blended. And so there is sort of no really concrete plan for the future.
Peter Thiel
#48. Oil is also essential for military operations. No other substance, no other raw material, is so vital for the prosecution of warfare, than petroleum. And the United States being the world's only global power, is totally dependent on petroleum.
Michael Klare
#49. That which offers no resistance, overcomes the hardest substances.
Laozi
#50. In Sweden, water fluoridation, to my knowledge, is no longer advocated by anybody. In Sweden, the emphasis nowadays is to keep the environment as clean as possible with regard to pharmacologically active and, thus, potentially toxic substances.
Arvid Carlsson
#51. The best lies are always flavoured with the truth but if the substance is rotten, it will stink no matter how much you try to disguise it.
M.R.C. Kasasian
#52. Like a flame breaking the boundaries to survive underwater, we, too, are something beautiful. We are a substance of our own design. We're more than water. We're more than fire. We're a miracle, a living and breathing combination, with no formula to define us.
Renee Ericson
#53. No! Such as they will not destroy marriage - they will save it! They restore the vital substance while we preserve the empty shell.
Jesse Lynch Williams
#54. No pleasure is simpler, no luxury cheaper, no consciousness-altering substance more benign.
James Norwood Pratt
#55. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time - that is the basic message.
Pema Chodron
#57. There was no smell, no texture, no temperature to it. It had as much substance as a politician's promise.
Patrick Thomas
#58. Blood is the substance that allows any living thing to exist, but blood is blood. I have heard of people drinking each other's blood. They cut each other, and they drink it and it's supposed to be a euphoric feeling. But, blood has no special interest for me.
Richard Ramirez
#59. The thing that is most beautiful about Antarctica for me is the light. It's like no other light on Earth, because the air is so free of impurities. You get drugged by it, like when you listen to one of your favorite songs. The light there is a mood-enhancing substance.
Jon Krakauer
#60. All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.
Edmund Burke
#61. Stated most simply, New Death is the condition whereby human corpses now lie always on a horizontal vector - no matter the angle of the surface or the substance of the matter below them - and now orient so that their feet are facing all observers, all the time.
China Mieville
#62. And yet now that we were seventeen the substance of time itself no longer seemed fluid but had assumed a gluelike consistency and churned around us like a yellow cream in a confectioner's machine.
Elena Ferrante
#63. I do not deny the existence of material substance merely because I have no notion of it, but because the notion of it is inconsistent, or in other words, because it is repugnant that there should be a notion of it.
George Berkeley
#64. Its a fact of being in love that we often pay no attention whatsoever to the substance of what a lover says, while being intoxicated to ecstasy by the way it's said. I was in love with her eyes, but I didn't read them. I loved her voice, but I didn't really hear the fear & the anguish in it.
Gregory David Roberts
#65. No amount of alcohol or any illegal substance would make me touch him.
Richelle Mead
#66. The FDA calls certain substances "controlled." But there are no "controlled substances," there are only controlled citizens.
Thomas Szasz
#67. I will not sulk about having no boyfriend, but develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as woman of substance,complete without boyfriend, as best way to obtain boyfriend.
Helen Fielding
#68. Surely, I find myself daydreaming, there is something, some substance already in common use, that women could drink after sex or at the end of the month, that would keep them unpregnant with no one the wiser.
Katha Pollitt
#69. No one who is in this world will deny that evils exist. What, then, do we say? That evil is not a living and animated substance, but a condition of the soul which is opposed to virtue and which springs up In the slothful because of their falling away from good.
Saint Basil
#70. Sex is a fact of life ... and while it may lead to abuses ... no words need be spoken ... for people to know that the subject is one pleasantly interwoven in all human activities and involves the very substance of creation itself.
Hugo Black
#71. Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality.
Walter Kaufmann
#72. There is the name and the thing; the name is a sound which sets a mark on and denotes the thing. The name is no part of the thing nor of the substance; it is an extraneous piece added to the thing, and outside of it.
Michel De Montaigne
#73. A man like me has no business with this substance "beauty," yet here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart.
David Mitchell
#74. EGGS! They're not a food, they belong in no group! They're just farts clothed in substance!
Dylan Moran
#75. Playing quarterback ... it's no joke ... The difference here with Johnny Manziel, there's a lot of style and very little substance.
Boomer Esiason
#76. Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and interpret facts, even to know what we can or might observe. And we need facts to validate theories and give them substance.
Stephen Jay Gould
#77. There is no way in which a simple substance could begin in the course of nature, since it cannot be formed by means of compounding.
Gottfried Leibniz
#78. But I didn't know where I wanted to go. Or what I wanted to do when I got there. I had dreams, but they were vague things with no real substance. I wanted to be famous, or really rich, or wildly successful, but that was as far as the dream went. My whole life was a fill-in-the-blank.
Nick Hornby
#79. Everyone had very uncreased necks, which meant no prolonged inclining of the head, which meant no reading. Linda's own neck looked like a finger, but she reassured herself that the creases were like tree rings marking her substance.
Tony Tulathimutte
#80. These were everyday sounds magnified by darkness. And darkness was nothing - it was not a substance, it was not a presence, it was no more than an absence of light.
Ian McEwan
#82. But no matter what the dictionary says, in my opinion, a problem derails your life and an inconvenience is not being able to get a nice seat on the un-derailed train. Given that, I've had three and a half problems. A dead guy in my bed, substance abuse, and manic-depression.
Carrie Fisher
#83. When I see an object there is no will; when its sensations are carried to the brain, there comes the reaction, which says "Do this", or "Do not do this", and this state of the ego-substance is what is called will
Swami Vivekananda
#84. There is no time limit, no statute of limitations. Sharing our lives with dear people to win them to Jesus is the substance of Christianity, the delightful work we've been commissioned to.
Jen Hatmaker
#85. When God says that our faith is the substance of what we hope for, what we are expecting, He's giving us an open invitation with no limits and no boundaries.
Larry Huch
#86. Love was not a quantifiable substance. There was always more of it somewhere, and even after one love had been lost, it was by no means impossible to find another.
Paul Auster
#87. People are surprisingly off put just by saliva, the substance that you carry around in your mouth. You swallow it. You have no objection to it. But then it leaves your body, and you're just revolted. So it - that - just that right there to me is a fascinating thing.
Mary Roach
#88. True thusness is the substance of thought, and thought is the function of true thusness. There is no thought except that of true thusness. Thusness does not move, but its motion and function are inexhaustible.
Bruce Lee
#89. I knew that this was what I wanted to talk about on stage. There was no point being coy about it, or pretending that I wasn't gay. That was the substance of my whole act. If you took that away, there would be nothing left.
Julian Clary
#90. What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it. - A substance in a cushion
Gertrude Stein
#91. In our society, it is psychological murder to deprive a man of a job ... you are in substance saying to that man You have no right to exist.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#92. Too often the man who complains the loudest has nothing of substance to say. Too often the man who complains the most provides no answers of solution.
Jayce O'Neal
#93. The substance of the universe is obedient and compliant; and the reason which governs it has in itself no cause for doing evil, for it has no malice, nor does it do evil to anything, nor is anything harmed by it. But all things are made and perfected according to this reason.
Marcus Aurelius
#94. There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind, and its infinite manifestation, for God is All in All. Spirit is immortal Truth; Matter is mortal error
Mary Baker Eddy
#95. In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.
Barry Commoner
#96. Treasure the shadow ... There are no shadows save from substance cast.
Edith M. Thomas
#97. Coleridge wrote, Dreams are no shadows, but the very substances and calamities of my life.
Sidney Sheldon
#98. Information, long of reach, devastating, and as a side benefit, a substance with no serious legal repercussions, was superior to any other form of power.
Louise Erdrich
#99. The symbol is greater than visible substance ... Unhappy the land that has no symbols, or that chooses their meaning without great care.
Freya Stark
#100. He felt full of a dense and sour substance that was blocking his chest, and it wasn't grief. After all those years, life now seemed like no more than a trap, a maze, not even a maze, just a room that was all walls, no door.
Etgar Keret
