Quotes About Stillness

All of human unhappiness comes from one single thing: not knowing how to remain at rest in a room. —Blaise Pascal

One piece had been titled "Expectant Silence" and consisted of a man sitting at the piano, playing nothing.

The distant roar of a walking lion rolls against the stillness of the night, and we listen. It is the voice of Africa bringing memories that do not exist in our minds or in our hearts - perhaps not even in our blood. It is out of time, but it is there, and it spans a chasm whose other side we cannot see.

There isn't much I have to say, that I wouldn't rather just shut up and do.

In the early days of picture-taking, the exposure shutter had to stay open for a long time, so you had to stay really still.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

I love silence.

Silence moves faster when it's going backward.

And now there is merely silence, silence, silence, saying all we did not know.

Only silence perfects silence.

I start any work the same way. I start a rehearsal with silence.

Silence is best.

Silence is the most powerful state.

Sit with silence a lot - real silence, where nothing is happening - because you learn so much in those moments of quiet.

See and keep silent.

The deepest rivers make least din, The silent soule doth most abound in care.

I've soaked up so much through dancing, but I also have to be still. I want to be silent and read, to shut up and take time to respect the vision someone put into a book.

If the room falls silent for a moment, all I hear is white noise.

In this book, when I say "Don't think," what I mean is: don't listen to the chatter. Pay no attention to those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind.

When we find ourself in the dark, we must stop what we're doing, look for His light, and listen for His voice. If He is directing us, yet we ignore it, fail to see it, refuse to do it, run from it, don't comprehend it, or deliberately disobey it, we will be miserably lost. We have to be still and know that He is God. We have to reach out to Him and He will give us a sense that He is there.

Sometimes, in a tight game with runners on, digging in at short, ready to break with the ball, a peace I'd never felt before would paralyze the diamond. For a moment of eternal stillness I felt as if I were cocked at the very heart of the Midwest.

I feel again the hunger to let go of my striving and find the ability to become content and still, intentionally superfluous, as writer Helen M. Luke puts it. I want a refuge from my old conquering self.

If you can't be still and wait, you can't become what God created you to be.

Everything I wanted to say would have to wait, and I'd go back to the same suspended animation I'd been in before.