Quotes About Silence

And if there are no cars or planes, and if no one's Uncle John is out in the wood lot west of town banging away at a quail or pheasant; if the only sound is the slow beat of your own heart, you can hear another sound, and that is the sound of life winding down to its cyclic close, waiting for the first winter snow to perform last rites.

Pure prayer begins at the threshold of silence. It says nothing, asks for nothing. It is a kind of listening. The deeper the listening, the less we listen for, until silence itself becomes the voice of God.

One evening, after a Dharma talk at the Cambridge Zen Center, a student asked Seung Sahn Soen-sa, "What is love?" Soen-sa said, "I ask you: what is love?" The student was silent. Soen-sa said, "This is love." The student was still silent. Soen-sa said, "You ask me: I ask you. This is love.

I'm sure there are people who, even suddenly understanding the true situation, would have felt no more than a twinge of regret or vague guilt as they continued to sit in embarrassed silence beside the grieving, confused man. On the other hand, I am equally certain there are people who would have been far more sensitive in the first place, who may have recognized that a deeper problem existed and reached out to understand and help before I did.

Sólo hay una manera de evitar la crítica: no hacer nada, no decir nada, y no ser nada. ARISTÓTELES, FILÓSOFO

Clever be the tongue that can speak without talking. - old saying

To manufacture fear you have to mobilize a large portion of the people to accept it exists. That takes work. Blood must be shed. Terrorism, if you will. But to counterfeit fear? That's much easier. All you have to do is silence those who call fear into question.

The "violence" in the words "time warrior" was intended. For although the work you do can be slow and easy, you must pull out your sword ahead of time to carve out periods of space and silence.

Let's say I dared to suspend myself in the moment between breaths.

There is no Mystery. You already know Reality. You only need to stop talking to yourself, and learn to wordlessly pay attention.

The conversation at dinner hadn't been successful either; it bore the marks of an old married couple who had very little left to say to each other.

He starts walking again toward the school. Part of me wants to ask more but for once I keep my mouth shut. There's safety in silence. Say nothing and you can't say anything wrong.

I rap for the trees...for the trees have no tongues.

Members of this school insist that the only way to find an opening to our underground world is to seek out a quiet and secluded spot. Close your eyes. Concentrate your attention inward. Descend.

In the speech sound wave, one word runs into the next seamlessly; there are no little silences between spoken words the way there are white spaces between written words. We simply hallucinate word boundaries when we reach the end of a stretch of sound that matches some entry in our mental dictionary.

The freedom to complain rests on an assurance that the government won't punish or silence the complainer. The front line in democratization, then, is constraining the government from abusing its monopoly on force to brutalize its uppity citizens.

If you have to silence people who disagree with you, does that mean you have no good arguments for why they're mistaken?

Stanley Goldfarb died and his relatives and the congregation gathered for an evening of prayers and mourning. When the time came for the mourners to come up and eulogize him, no one stirred. After several minutes, the rabbi was getting anxious. "Someone must have something nice to say about him," he implored. More silence. Finally a voice piped up from the back of the room: "His brother was worse.

Love, and do what you will. If you keep silence, do it out of love. If you cry out, do it out of love. If you refrain from punishing, do it out of love.

I love order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.

I love silence. But I usually only listen to that when I'm sleeping.

It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.

Two hearts in love need no words.

Mind and night will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers.