Quotes About Silence

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn; -- Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be, In the cold grave-under the deep deep sea.

When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine. Why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ...Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

T)here was a story they used to tell at home about a girl whose punishment was that every time she opened her mouth, snakes and toads came out, snakes and toads with every word. The book didn't say what she did about it, but I've always assumed she probably ended up keeping her mouth shut.

The observations and encounters of a devotee of solitude and silence are at once less distinct and more penetrating than those of the sociable man; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Images and perceptions which might otherwise be easily dispelled by a glance, a laugh, an exchange of comments, concern him unduly, they sink into mute depths, take on significance, become experiences, adventures, emotions.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.

Her smile and voice suggested the kind of excitement that comes when the first words in a long, silent relationship are spoken at last - a subtle excitement secretly incorporating into this one moment everything that has happened until now.

what time actually is--nothing less than a silent sister, a column of mercury without a scale, for the purpose of keeping people from cheating.

No seu sorriso e na sua voz talvez transparecesse um pouco da emoção que se produz quando, depois de prolongadas relações mudas, se profere a primeira palavra; é uma emoção sutil que secretamente inclui o passado inteiro no momento presente.

life of service and humility, of silent subordination and religious training, from which he wrested intellectual pleasures congruent with his

The Sehnsucht motif, a lonely wandering voice in the night, softly uttered its tremulous question. Silence followed, a silence of waiting. And then the answer: the same hesitant, lonely strain, but higher in pitch, more radiant and tender. Silence again. And then

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.

If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision.

We thank Him less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. It is our emptiness in the presence of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him.

Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.

Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness.

The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.

It is not speaking that breaks our silence, but the anxiety to be heard. The words of the proud man impose silence on all others, so that he alone may be heard. The humble man speaks only in order to be spoken to.

Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and fruitful silence of God and learns something of the secret of His perfections less by seeing than by fruitive love.

When Knowledge Went North (excerpt) As for us, We came nowhere near being right, Since we have the answers. For he who knows does not speak He who speaks does not know And The Wise Man gives instruction Without the use of speech.

The whole of life is to spiritualize our activities by humility and faith, to silence our nature by charity.

Monastic prayer begins not so much with "considerations" as with a "return to the heart," finding one's deepest center, awakening the profound depths of our being