Quotes About Silence

A poisoned silence floated through the rooms like a big fishnet that Violet alone slashed through with loud recriminations.

No, really. Just quiet. Nothing louder than waves lapping or ice melting in crystal glasses.

Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all by themselves with no help from the mind.

They bowed their heads and listened obediently to Misner's beautifully put words and the tippy-tap steps of women who were nowhere in sight.

The men had gnawed through the daisy trees until, wild-eyed and yelling, they broke in two and hit the ground. In the huge silence that followed their fall, orchids spiraled down to join them.

I don't miss you anymore adam rather i miss the emotion that your dying produced a feeling so strong it defined me while it erased you leaving only your absence for me to live in like the silence of the japanese gong that is more thrilling than whatever sound may follow.

Ashamed of the insults that were being heaped on our friend, we just sat there: I picked toe jam, Frieda cleaned her fingernails with her teeth, and Pecola finger-traced some scars on her knee—her head cocked to one side.

I think about reading the poem to her, but some things are just too true to ever say out loud.

For all I know, maybe everyone is screaming as they go through life, silently.

Silence over Europe's recent past was the necessary condition for the construction of a European future.

Silence over Europe's recent past was the necessary condition for the construction of a European future. Today - in the wake of painful public debates in almost every other European country - it seems somehow fitting (and in any case unavoidable) that Germans, too, should at last feel able openly to question the canons of well intentioned official memory.

It is less distracting in the silence," she said. "Sustained silence allows one truly to listen to what is deep inside. We call it waiting in expectation.

When I left the room, Maria Thins was still standing in front of the painting.

She attributed her own fine sewing to the prolonged periods of silence at Meeting; these had made her thoughts level and her hand steady, which was reflected in her even stitching.

She felt so confused by the gap between what she thought and what was expected of her that she could not speak. Perhaps it was better not to, until she was more sure of what she wanted to say. That way her words could not be twisted and flung back at her. Silence was a powerful tool at Meeting, clearing the way to God. Perhaps now it would allow Honor to be heard.

Elle se sentait tellement déconcertée par la contradiction existant entre ce qu'elle pensait et ce qu'on espérait d'elle qu'elle était incapable de parler. Peut-être valait-il mieux qu'elle se taise, en attendant d'être plus sûre de ce qu'elle voulait dire. Ainsi ses paroles ne pourraient-elles être déformées et lui être renvoyées à la figure.

James found the talk by the wagons tiring after a while. He liked to listen, and he had thoughts of what he'd like to say about the weather, or the corn crop, or the road being macadamized, or the rascals in Congress. But he never quite had the courage to speak them aloud. By the time he had formed words to his liking, the conversation had moved on.

So we continued, arm in arm along the beach, talking until at last we had no more to say, like a storm that blows itself out, and our eyes dropped to the ground, where the curies were waiting for us to find them.

Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. Loneliness is small, solitude is large. Loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. Loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nobody answers; solitude has its roots in the great silence of eternity.

We Indians know about silence," he said. "We aren't afraid of it. In fact, to us it is more powerful than words.

When we constantly fill up all our "empty" time with stimulation in the form of electronic devices, games, and distractions, our brains become disengaged and the thinking process is effectively halted. We never get to hear our own inner voice-we don't develop a relationship with ourselves and our minds. We don't get to know who we are because we're not listening.

There is no suspension, no whispered prayer for silk to stop my fall. There is only the falling, and it goes on and on, in fierce silence and sharp bursts of breath.

I've learned over the years that these heavy, painful, anguish-filled moments...these moments when I so badly want to say something to break the tension, are exactly the moments I need to stay silent. They are the moments I need to hold still, and hold that sacred space open. Because when I can hold still and hold on in that place, no matter how hard it is for both of us, something can happen.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Mastering