Quotes About Silence

C'étaient tous deux des hommes taciturnes et discrets. Ils le laissèrent à ses réflexions, gardèrent les leurs par-devers eux, lui offrant leur présence en gage de sécurité et d'amitié, tandis qu'ils arpentaient rues et places.

Tell me, when your wife died...how did you go on living?" He opened his mouth and closed it without answering. She turned away. They went back through the forest to the sea. On the stony strand of the isle, he was still unable to speak. He watched as she unclipped and let fall her purple cloak, and then dropped the brooch that has pinned it and turned and went away along the white stones. The man named Mariscus followed her out of sight. How did you go on living?

The two men were still in the habit of taking this last glass together; the depth and endurance of friendship marked as much in their silence as in the words.

Watching, letting the growth of wisdom guide him into silence

One day it's been so long since you've talked to someone that it's impossible to say the things you should have said years ago.

Silence is a sounding thing, to one who listens hungrily.

If you scream, you're marked "insane." But silence is a place in which to scream!

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

Meditation has been defined as the cessation of active eternal thought.

There are so many kinds of reality, and so many secret openings in the walls we think are mute.

Every woman has known the torment of getting up to speak. Her heart racing, at times entirely lost for words, ground and language slipping away – that's how daring a feat, how great a transgression it is for a woman to speak – even just open her mouth – in public.

Women should break out of the snare of silence. They shouldn't be conned into accepting a domain which is the margin or the harem.

Que naîtrait-il de mon désir? Le corps unique et inconnu de notre silence: il faut trouver cette langue sans mots et sans limites qui nous perpétuera sans erreur et sans affaiblissement.

And I was afraid. She frightens me because she can knock me down with a word. Because she does not know that writing is walking on a dizzying silence setting one word after the other on emptiness. Writing is miraculous and terrifying like the flight of a bird who has no wings but flings itself out and only gets wings by flying. — Hélène Cixous, The Book of Promethea . (University of Nebraska Press February 1, 1991) Originally published 1983.

I see nothing. I do not move. It is an empty time, animal time, vigilant, I am submerged, under the earth and under time. I listen. Perhaps the waiting is a form of prayer.

Silence will not betray your thoughts but the expression on your face will. Humor has a hundred faces tragedy only a few.

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.

You cannot judge the importance of things by the noise they make.

What most observers failed to perceive in him was something quite bafflingly simple—a love of quietness, contemplation, and being alone.

Saying goodbye to someone isn't really the hard part. It's living every day, not being able to say anything to them

Sometimes even the smallest of words can be the ones to hurt you

The secret of life, Is not what you speak, it's what you whisper to yourself.

It was in the silence between us. When my soul cried and no matter what I did, there was no way to comfort it.

There is nothing intelligent about not standing up for yourself. "Staying silent is a trait of a true coward. You may not win every battle... However, everyone will at least know what you stood for—YOU.