Quotes About Silence

You don't know what to say. You won't know what to say for a long time. Your reply was so many years ago.

Whitby's often silent, and when he speaks his questions and concerns do nothing to alleviate the pressure of that gloom, the sense of intent eternal and everlasting that occupies this stretch of land, that predates Area X. The still, standing water, the oppressive blackness of a sky in which the blue peers down through the trees at startling intervals, only to be taken away again, and only ever seeming to come to you from a thousand miles off anyway.

The impatient, feckless reader, posessed of no glimmer of intellectual or historical curiosity, should do an old historian a favor and skip the next few pages, proceeding directly to the Silence itself (Part III). I would assume that, in these horrid modern times, that will include most of you. Of course, those readers least likely to read these footnotes, and thus least likely to appreciate the next few pages, will skip this note and bore themselves upon the ennui of history .

If he'd had something to say, he should have picked up the phone a long time ago.

Silence is the hardest scream

Very well. I understand. Just ... shut up!

The goal of the torturer is to make the one, the body, emphatically and crushingly present by destroying it, and to make the other, the voice, absent by destroying it.

The ultimate weapon for the abusive individual is the refusal to communicate directly....

She had stood by and said nothing, but Wanda had been nice to her anyway.

For a time neither the man nor the woman could speak. There was nothing in their humdrum, habit-smoothed tilling of the soil and washing of pots and pans to prepare them for a scene like this- a moonlight barn, a strange dead man, and that dead man;s son babbling of brooks and squirrels and playing jigs on a fiddle for a dirge. At last, however, Simeon found his voice.

Llevada por Francisco Rosas, Julia salió del atrio, sin oír

se hacía la dormida.

Frente al espejo aprendió las palabras y las risas. Cuando se casó, Justino acaparó las palabras y los espejos y ella atravesó unos años silenciosos y borrados en los que se movía como una ciega, sin entender lo que sucedía a su alrededor. La única memoria que tenía de esos años era que no tenía ninguna. No había sido ella la que atravesó ese tiempo de temor y silencio.

How unfair, he thought; I can close my mouth whenever I like, as tight as I like, and what has a mouth to say? It is there for taking in nourishment, yet it is well defended, but ears - ears are a prey to every onslaught.

He panted for silence as others do for air.

Un seul beau son est plus beau qu'un long parler.

I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.

We cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly it it is true, and in the subsequent quarter century the world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide. (v)

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.

Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking, loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning.

And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

The silence of two people is deeper than the silence of one.