Quotes About Silence

And I longed to tell Uncle Lawrence, to show him I knew when to keep quiet. But I'd long since found out that too often we can't say the very thing that will redeem us. And if that isn't being grown-up, I don't know what is.

would be terrified that she would be found out. She could be so frightened, perhaps, that she might blurt out a confession. No one was leaning on her. To a burdened conscience, silence and solicitude can be more threatening than interrogation.

Disasters often begin silently with an almost imperceptible shift in the way things are expected to be.

The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We've always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.

Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.

That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.

It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

And yet I don't seem able to touch on the subjects I'm so longing to bring out into the daylight.

Don't put it into words. Let us leave some things to be understood, not said.

In the aftermath of death Small talk feels too small, big talk too enormous.

This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet.

All the things we don't say, all the words we swallow, and it makes nothing but trouble.

Maybe that was true of marriage everywhere. Between times, in their own living rooms, the men seemed to be resting for the next round of pontificating and so saved their strength by staying silent.

This is what it is like to be married: conversations in which no one actually speaks.

There are really only two commandments of Nanaville: love the grandchildren, and hold your tongue.

For the rest of her life Rebecca Winter would apprehend the rumble of a truck engine in deep silence, or anything dimly like it, even the rhythmic solo roll of a kettledrum in a symphonic passage, as the soothing sound of salvation.

Words, words. They mean nothing, less than nothing. I know.

Democracy itself has always been loud and raucous, but when its rules are followed, it eventually creates consensus. The modern debate does not. Instead, it inspires in some people the desire to forcibly silence the rest.

If we can only speak to slander our betters, let us hold our tongues.

I possess the faculty of enjoying the company of those I - of my friends as well in silence as in conversation.

Sullen silence was taken for rapt attention, and gave him greater room to talk; sharp answers were received as smart sallies of girlish vivacity, that only required an indulgent rebuke; and flat contradictions were but as oil to the flames, calling forth new strains of argument to support his dogmas, and bringing down upon me endless floods of reasoning to overwhelm me with conviction.

It was no use beginning to dispute with such indulged, unreasoning creatures: so I held my peace. I was accustomed, now, to keeping silence when things distasteful to my ear were uttered; and now, too, I was used to wearing a placid smiling countenance when my heart was bitter within me.

He had beautiful manners. Which, if you ask me, was mostly a question of saying nothing, to anyone, ever.

Sleep makes the silence and the terrible fear go by more quickly, helps pass the time, since it's impossible to kill.