Quotes About Silence

O que eu gostava de poder encher os livros de silêncio, e tender cada vez mais para o silêncio, e que as palavras estivessem carregadas de silêncio de maneira a que o leitor as pudesse encher como quisesse.

Não me agarre com tanta força senhor mas percebi que tinha de me prender assim, não por minha causa, por ele, não disse - Não fale no meu irmão mais velho por saber que não ia falar e a prova que não ia falar estava em que quase não conseguia mexer-me, a quantidade de alturas em que devíamos dizer - Pai e não dizemos

o pai de manta nos joelhos à cata de um - Sabes? entre meia dúzia de palavras que tinha, não meia dúzia, duas ou três, não duas ou três, nenhuma, bolhinhas de cuspo que rebentavam mudas (...)

poner al Ejército firme, imponer el orden en este desastre, gobernar esta letrina, unos sopapos aquí y allá, los semanarios callados, el pueblo callado que es lo que le gusta, créame

somos búzios que nenhum eco habita

Mentre io piango come piangono i pini dentro la brocca di resina senza che nessuno se ne accorga [...]

Tanto ruído no interior deste silêncio: são as vozes dos outros a falarem em mim, pessoas de quem gostei, pessoas que perdi, gente que tenho ainda.

O que eu gostava de poder encher os livros de silêncio, e tender cada vez mais de silêncio, e que as palavras estivessem carregadas de silêncio de maneira a que o leitor as pudesse encher como quisesse.

Que gente! Que coisas! Que opiniões! Que vida! Sinto entre mim e o meu país a distância abismosa deste sentimento: o desprezo. (...) O silêncio é a única resposta possível.

For a minute or two they remained in complete silence--the silence of people who know each other so well that words are merely an accessory rather than a necessity.

That shut her up real horrorshow and lovely.

Often it is what we do not say which gives away a flaw in our thinking

George and I talked. An hour passed. Surely we both had things to do. There was a silence. Nervously. 'Please, may I play the part?' George paused. Then quietly, 'Shurr.' Not even a word. Hardly a syllable. A sound. A small sound above the London traffic. It changed my life.

It is countries with no dissent, which live in the quiet of the grave, that are vulnerable and fragile.

Do not speak unless you can improve on the silence.

If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance.… In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence.… If only you practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence … after a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence.

Charles de Foucauld

My preference is for prose with more silence in it, language that contains more pockets of strangeness.

Silence is the fruit of the occupation; it hangs in branches, seeps from gutters.

All my life, he thinks, my best companions cannot speak the same language as me.

It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world—what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?

wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world—what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?

silent desperation of everything they never said - gaps and absences in every conversation, the past circumscribing the present, the future hemming in the past.

Together, the unlikeliest of penitents, silently, grafting words to air, they sent their prayers into the room.