Quotes About Silence

Humility and silence are beautiful graces in young people. Never be ashamed of being a learner: Jesus was one at twelve years; when He was found in the temple, He was "sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions" (Luke 2:46).

somos nosotros, los psicoanalistas, quienes en el silencio de la escucha imaginamos mentalmente, en forma de escena, el origen del sufrimiento experimentado por el neurótico".

A mí me enfurecía que mi madre no tuviera cosas bonitas, y me enfurecía aún más no poder proporcionárselas yo, y más aún no poder decir nada de todo aquello en voz alta, porque mi madre seguía cantando, haciendo todo lo posible por mantener el ánimo.

Love needs expression, Captain Geary, or doubts grow amid the silence. Doubts of the other and doubts of yourself.

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose. ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS, M.D.

I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end.

When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, 'What is the sound of the waterfall?' 'Silence,' he finally told me.

You hear yourself walking on the snow. You hear the absence of the birds. A stillness so complete, you hear the whispering inside of you. Alone morning after morning, and even more at night. They say we are born alone, to live and die alone. But they are wrong. We get to be alone by time, by luck, or by misadventure. — Jack Gilbert, from "Betrothed," Collected Poems (Knopf, 2012)

The words are all around but the words are only sounds and no one ever seems to listen.

Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

My witness is the empty sky.

I'm not going to tell you about this. I refuse to. There are things you know you'll die before telling, things you know you should have died before ever having seen. I watched and saw.

If we had been seeking strength through control over ourselves and others, we discover that was only a false version of strength, that truth and inherent strength appear in moments of deep silence and wholeness when we rest unshakably with things as they are. If we had been seeking beauty or love through others or in states that perfect our mind, this too comes whole and unbidden when desires and longings themselves come to rest. This is awakening to our Buddha nature.

I was thinking how much trouble people get into because they can't keep their mouths shut.

I had just sold the rights to this book to HBO, and King had read about the transaction. He looked at me from the adjacent urinal, and broke a tense silence. "I read in the newspapers," King roared, "that I'm now feeding your whole motherfucking family.

They did not look at each other. They did not say a word to each other... They knew that talk is meaningless when a common knowledge is already there. The silence bound them as no words ever could.

Shane was looking down the road and on to the open plain and the horse was obeying the silent command of the reins. He was riding away and I knew that no word or thought could hold him. The big horse, patient and powerful, was already settling into the steady pace that had brought him into our valley, and the two, the man and the horse, were a single dark shape in the road as they passed beyond the reach of the light from the windows

I didn't reach out, and she was gone.

thinking that this conversation was going

You noticed things. You're not sure when you start. It's only when you've noticed - noticed that you know you've noticed. Maybe between the first time when you're staring to think, Is this what I think it is? and the second time when you think, Yes, between those two times, there's a silence. A pause.

Or would you feel how my love is wrapped around by the richest, the wildest song? And, if I said my love for you is like the time when the nightingale is absent from our twilight world, would you hear it as silence? Nothing? No love? Or as anticipation of that rich current of music, which fills heart, soul, body, mind.

Can they hear the stars, here where they lie in the hollow?

The day that she stopped speaking was the day she began to understand so much more about the world around her, to appreciate the many textures of silence. She learned to listen.