Quotes About Stillness

The mountain withdraws into its stillness, my body dissolves into the sunlight, tears fall that have nothing to do with i. What it is that brings them on, I do not know

Now there was silence. For hours on end the valley would be completely still and empty, and we became curious. What was everybody doing? Faustin, we knew, traveled around the neighboring farms as a visiting slaughterer, slitting the throats and breaking the necks of rabbits and ducks and pigs and geese so that they could be turned into terrines and hams and confits.

I've discovered that you can solve many difficulties with what Lao-tzu called non-action

No one, it appeared to Barney, had anything to do now; the weight of empty time hung over them all.

Maybe I'll just sit here parked for a while, he decided, and alpha meditate or go into various different altered states of consciousness.

Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.

He stopped to look around. Everything was silent.

Sebastian sat silently and passively, like a chicken, listening.

If you speak to people, you just attract their attention," he said, with a shaking voice. "You should just keep quiet and still and they overlook you. I've been doing it all my life. I know how to do it. Your way, you just—you make yourself visible.

Around them there was nothing but silence, as if all the world were holding its breath.

and asked the I Ching: Should I be here doing this, or should I go on somewhere else and keep searching? The reply came: Keeping still, so that restlessness dissolves; then, beyond the tumult, one can perceive the great laws.

and asked the I Ching: Should I be here doing this, or should I go on somewhere else and keep searching? The reply came: Keeping still, so that restlessness dissolves; then, beyond the tumult, one can perceive the great laws. It went on: As a mountain keeps still within itself, thus a wise man does not permit his will to stray beyond his situation.

The terminal has that too-suddenly-hushed feeling of the moment after loud music stops.

This is what a memorial is: standing still, staring at something that isn't ther

This is what a memorial is: Standing still, staring at something that isn't there.

When I turned to look at you, I was afraid to move again— the moment was just too beautiful to be lost.

The quiet times are the ones to hold on to.

Under the table, I crossed my legs so hard it hurt. I was using all the strength it would take to run away, only to stay still.

Sometimes I love it when we just lie on our backs, gaze off, stay still.

We both stay there, on our tightrope. Not looking down, but not moving, either.

One thing he is grateful for: his mind is not so burdened as it had been with anger and self-pity and doubt and guilt and rage. The voices that whisper in his ear from time to time have fallen silent. He has only so much energy in his body and right now, all is concentrated on staying alive. So in a way, he finds some measure of peace. Or if not peace exactly, then --- stillness.

And if other old men must be willing, at the end, to push up off their deathbed and adventure out into the unknown, how much more willing must that man be whose whole life has been just such a daily exercise of adventuring, even in the stillness of his own garden? I mean, the poet.

I like the kind of man John is. He watches things closely and then does nothing with the information.

If you're still, and if you don't hope too much, peace will come to you. It's a grace. But you have to choose happiness.