I have looked for years for this version of the 11th verse from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. It is translated by Witter Bynner:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness;
Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.

Written in the 6th century b.c., this marvelous wisdom has volumes to speak to us, though these “volumes” are qualitative, not quantitative. It is only in our emptiness that we find our fullness, in our nothingness that we find our somethingness, in our death that we find our life.  And this death can take place long before the death of our body.