Quotes About Stillness

How I pray is breathe.

One bird sits still Watching the work of God:

Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturally, quietly, and not have to take your breath in continuous short gasps. A place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship the Father in secret.

Folks out here talk about fate, but for Kit it was a matter of stillness.

I love to close my eyes a moment and think of the land outside, white under the mingled snow and moonlight--the heaps of stones by the roadside white--snow in the furrows. Mon Dieu! How quiet and how patient!

I call it a November-loneliness because there is a sort of demanding stillness in my heart and it, more than ever, inflames both my mental and psychological system. November never pauses, it listlessly seems to show off, don't you think so? Or, rather, it does pause but it is always a hellish pause…

But the pear tree was as lovely as ever and as full of flower and as still.

So if you've always been a "giver," take some time for yourself in your life – to stop, be still, to allow the Universe to nourish you. We all deserve nourishment, even if we were taught those many years ago that we didn't. And if you give it permission, the Universe is happy to provide.

To see to the depth of a river, wade into still water. In the silent space under the slick of the world, the river clears. If you stand still too, so as not to wrinkle the water, you will see the shadows of minnows. You will smell sage and melting snow and you will notice, incised into the topography of the silt, little river channels pointing to the sea. And isn't this what you had hoped to find? A quiet place where everything comes clear and the Earth itself shows the way to the one thing.

I grew to appreciate the company of people who listen to the world. They don't feel the need to talk all the while. They were alert to bird-cries, waves sucking on rocks, a rope frittering against a mast.

temporal shift, Rae remained

Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

In our culture, time can seem like an enemy....But the monastic perspective welcomes time as a gift from God and seeks to put it to good use rather than allowing us to be used up by it.....Liturgical time is essentially poetic time, oriented toward process rather than productivity, willing to wait attentively in stillness, rather than always pushing to get the job done

Yoga is the mastery of the mind's fluctuations.

Concentration is uniting the mind with one place, object, or idea for spiritual awakening.

laundromats . . . like a waiting room for people who didn't go anywhere

During my final London weeks, I'd watched Wolf Hall and marveled at the absolute stillness of Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. In an era of all things Kardashian, it was quite astonishing to see such major and with such little movement. In some ways, I'd have killed for stillness and perhaps only being killed would still me. Still.

Stillness and action are relative, not absolute, principles. It is important to find a balance of yin and yang, not just in qigong, but in everyday life. In movement, seek stillness and rest. In rest, be mindful and attentive.

Do not talk any more. Do not speak. Do not break silence until We are weary of each other. Let our fingers run like steel Carving the contours of our bodies' gold. Do not speak. My face sinks In the clotted summer of your hair. The sound of the bees stops. Stillness falls like a cloud. Be still. Let your body fall away Into the awe filled silence Of the fulfilled summer — Back, back, infinitely away — Our lips weak, faint with stillness. from "When We with Sappho

The Zen experience is what happens when you lose yourself in the moment. It feels as if the whole world stops, and you have a supreme sense of harmony and peace. But in fact, what actually stops is your ego-process. When the ego-process stops, so stop your expectations, desires, worries, and anxiety. Then you find yourself living in the present, overtaken by joy and filled with peace.

the paper on my lap. Slowly

Los madrugadores afantasmaban, todo en silencio, como si el lenguaje no se hubiera inventado todavía, ateridos, mojados.

whenever the emotion had reached its climax, suddenly it swung around and there followed a cosmic stillness. At such times I was remote from everything, and what had only a moment before excited me seemed to belong to a distant past.

silence surrounds me almost audibly