Quotes About Silence

For poetry makes nothing happen.

the dead are not separate from the living each has one foot in the unknown and cannot speak for the other

The silence of a place where there were once horses is a mountain and I have seen by lightning that ever mountain once fell from the air ringing like the chime of an iron shoe...

I have come back through the years to this stone hollow encrypted in its own stillness I hear it without listening

To remember Is not to rehearse, but to hear what never Has fallen silent.

Trees" I am looking at trees they may be one of the things I will miss most from the earth though many of the ones I have seen already I cannot remember and though I seldom embrace the ones I see and have never been able to speak with one I listen to them tenderly their names have never touched them they have stood round my sleep and when it was forbidden to climb them they have carried me in their branches

All night while the rain fell the dark valley heard in silence the silent valley did not remember you were asleep beside me while the rain fell all around us I listened to you breathing I wanted to remember the sound of your breath but we lay there forgetting asleep and awake forgetting a breath at a time while the rain went on falling around us. — W.S. Merwin, from "The Sound of Forgetting," Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)

Ancient World" Orange sunset in the deep shell of summer a long silence reaching across the dry pastures in the distance a dog barks at the sound of a door closing and at once I am older.

For the Anniversay of My Death" Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveler Like the beam of a lightless star Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange garment Surprised at the earth And the love of one woman And the shamelessness of men As today writing after three days of rain Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease And bowing not knowing to what

come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain

Utterance" Sitting over words Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing Not far Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark The echo of everything that has ever Been spoken Still spinning its one syllable Between the earth and silence

If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.

Silence is a form of communication, too. Sometimes less is more.

I think communication starts when words are not present at all ... I think we put so much emphasis on language, actually silence is so much more important.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

Never miss an opportunity to shut up.

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.

I am annoyed by individuals who are embarrassed by pauses in a conversation. To me, every conversational pause refreshes.

Do not speak unless you can improve the silence.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

As so often happens, I discover that it would have been better to keep my mouth shut.

Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.