Quotes About Silence

Still no reaction. No movement. Just total stillness, and a raised chin, and an averted gaze, and a dignified and implacable silence, like a veteran salesman insulted by a counteroffer.

She cleared her throat and

My driver asked, "Sir, do you have everything you need?" Which in an existential sense was a very big question, but I had no immediate requirements, so I just nodded in the mirror and stayed quiet.

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

To much has happened too fast Dear Diary. What I want is for nothing to happen at all. I don't even want good things anymore. I just want nothing.

If you can't talk sense, don't talk at all.

The good thing about complete darkness is you can lie there quietly and let the other person rethink the smart-alecky thing they have just said. With any luck they'll begin to regret it, or possibly they'll believe you have a magnificent rejoinder in mind but are too well-adjusted to use it.

A lot was spoken but nothing was said.

They were the weary down there, the craggy-faced, knobby, leather-handed toilers rehearsing their own demise, yielding in pitiful weakness to the scythe of mystery kept poised a lifetime at their jugulars … too simple and too tired to protest … too frightened to seek the truth … succumbed in silence, for without it … what was there left to believe?

If you're Irish enough, you can go an entire lifetime filled with conversations that never took place, like those

The sky darkened, the liquid singing of the blackbirds diminished and ceased, mud hens swam back to shore, climbed up the banks and huddled in the willows. The lights of a farm came on in the brown distance where patches of tule fog lay on the barren muddy fields. A wind came with the darkness, rattling the license plate, and a low, honking flight of geese passed.

Believe me, you have too many practices already. What is needed is rather a progressive inner simplification. Too many people identify spiritual prowess with being perpetually busy heaping meditation upon meditation, prayer upon prayer, reading upon reading instead of learning from the simple souls the great secret of knowing how, from time to time, to hold yourself back a little in peace and silence, attentive before God.5

He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.

The truth of life stands aghast in silence, and its brazen falsehood is loudly shouting, uttering pressing, painful questions: "With whom shall I sympathize? Whom shall I trust? Whom shall I love?

But in the dark everything was unnatural; the silence and the darkness were in themselves something like death.

Sometimes I feel like I'm choking to death on what I'm feeling. I need to talk and I don't even know how.

You're thinking about something, and it makes you forget to talk.

People who don't think shouldn't talk.

Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth

Alice thought to herself, 'Then there's no use in speaking.' The voices didn't join in this time, as she hadn't spoken, but to her great surprise, they all thought in chorus (I hope you understand what thinking in chorus means--for I must confess that I don't), 'Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!

The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--' Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked. We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily; 'really you are very dull!' You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth.

Well that's it: if you don't think, you shouldn't talk!

I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin.