Quotes About Stillness

This is like a boat following a current downstream. Though you can say that it moves, the boat is at rest and there is no trace of that movement. This is called 'moving without moving.'36

Being at rest and being inert are also completely different. Being at rest does not distance itself from living ch'i, but being inert is slightly removed from it.

The horses start tugging, one this way, one that; the wheels are drawn to such a divergence that they seem perpendicular to the road, a sign that the chariot has stopped. Or else, if it is moving, it might as well remain still, as happens to many people before whom the ramps of the most smooth and speedy roads open.

Hoe voel je je?' 'Als een schip,' zeg ik, 'een schip, een zeilschip dat in een windstilte is terechtgekomen. En dan plotseling is er even weer wat wind vaar ik weer. Dan heeft de wereld weer vat op me en kan ik weer meebewegen.

Soms gaan de gedachten zo razendsnel dat ik ze bijna niet meer kan denken, ze spoelen door mij heen en dan moet ik huilen. En dan opeens staat alles weer stil, verstard als op een toverlantarenplaatje en lijkt niets ooit meer van zijn plaats te kunnen komen en moet je weer gaan lopen om je omgeving op gang te krijgen. Zomaar lopen omdat je anders niet meer kunt voelen dat je ergens thuishoort, dat er tijd verstrijkt.

The shadows of the hills and rocks grew long in the valley bottom. But the guide didn't seem to notice. Sitting very still, his back leaning against the wall of the tomb, he had no sense of the passing day, or hunger, or thirst. He was filled with a different force, from a different time that had made him a stranger to the order of man. Perhaps he was no longer waiting for anything, no longer knew anything, and now he resembled the desert – silence, stillness, absence.

Thirdly, the breath provides a natural, gently moving target to focus on in your meditation; it grounds you in the here and now. You cannot take a breath for five minutes ago, or for five minutes' time. You can only take a breath for now

It was silence so dense that it ceased to be silence.

When the angry jerking about and spitting stops, the serenity starts.

She herself had done little all day; instead she reported from the edge of an unlived life.

And the wind falls silent, and the birds fall silent, and the wild cherry trees no longer shiver and creek.

For a moment, all movement ceases and the scene is one of crystalline stillness, silent except for a slow, melodramatic heartbeat.

peace comes to us when we simply stop fighting.

Watch for ways to help your children learn to be still and calm at times and find the deep-ocean peacefulness within their hub. From there they'll be better able to survive the storms brewing within them from moment to moment, and they'll have a better chance of thriving—emotionally, psychologically, socially—as they grow toward adulthood.

Quietness is the beginning of virtue. To be silent is to be beautiful. Stars do not make a noise.

Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.

Let's face it, stillness is not exactly easy to come by in today's culture. We are far more likely to be restless, anxious, fearful, fretful, and busy. But God's invitation is to be still—and to find again, in the calm pause, the assurance that He is, in fact, God. His plans are undeterred, and with or without us, He is going to receive glory from all peoples on the face of the earth.

Zij bewoog niet, stond stil en staarde en vroeg zich af, of dit sterven was.

Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to pieces. Or love can be a thing that endures, a rich, deep current flowing unending through the years.

Gamache enjoyed going to churches for their music and the beauty of the language and the stillness. But he felt closer to God in his Volvo.

Not a spoon clinked against a mug, not a creamer was popped, peeled and opened, not a breath. It was as though something else had joined them then. As though silence had taken a seat.

here, here, there was peace. The deep peace that comes not just with quiet, but with familiarity.

Armand Gamache had another skill that Brébeuf didn't seem to possess. He could disappear, when he chose. And it appeared he chose to disappear at that moment. Armand Gamache sat quietly. Almost a hole in the room.

Funny how I learned freedom from creatures that are rooted in place.