Silence Quotes - Page 23

Why are we embarassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?

Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.

There's just as much to be heard in silence as there is in a room filled with words.

A pregnant pause with enough gestation can give birth to a well formed idea.

The longer the silence remains untouched the longer the miscommunication creates its own stories.

a silent night. - the most eloquent poem i have ever read.

If I could record them and transmit them to the present age, they would constitute nothing more, nowadays, than dead sounds. They would be, in a word, sounds other than what they actually were, and from what their phonographic labels pretended they were – since it's in ourselves that the silence exists. It was while the sounds were still mysterious that it would have been really interesting to render the mystery palpable and transferable.

To think is to have doubt....yet even thinking will bring you to "no thought"....eventually.

Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest has failed.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

The fear of silence is a fear everyone should overcome.

I don't have kids or even that many friends, but if I did, I'd want my lasting impression on them to be this: Every life matters, but never one more than another. Sometimes silence holds more meaning than words. And love ... it's infinitely impossible to define, but unequivocally, without any doubt, the reason we are here.

I once traveled with a guide who was taking me to Faya. He didn't speak for nine hours. At the end of it he pointed to the horizon and said, 'Faya!' That was a good day.

His eyes made a slow scan of my closet doors, which were cracked. "I thought I heard something.""Yeah, well, guess what? I’m a living, breathing person, and every now and then I make noise!

We refuse to turn off our computers, turn off our phone, log off Facebook, and just sit in silence, because in those moments we might actually have to face up to who we really are.

In the summer,on fine evenings, I love to drive late andalone in the scented forests, and when I havereached a dark part stop, and sit quite still, listeningto the nightingales repeating their little tune overand over aga^n after interludes of gurgling, or ifthere are no nightingales, listening to the marvelloussilence, and letting its blessedness descend intomy very souL The nightingales in the forestsabout here all sing the same tune, and in the samekey of (E flat).

You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use— silence, exile, and cunning.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

...when your heart is broken, don't go silent - speak to God in his own language...

….Nothing was inevitable. She had not chosen this way. It was her fate. It had been decided since before time began. It had been decided before she began. Nothing could be done. There was no point in trying. It was way too late. The inevitability of nothing was totally supreme, overriding everything. No way out. No way through. She could only accept the unacceptable. She could only endure the unendurable. Nothing was wrong!Nothing was wrong and the wrongness of this awesome nothing seeped from her. Some people, only a few, saw it. Some people, only a few felt it. Some people, only a few, recognised it and in recognising it for what it was, raged against it. Through the nothingness, these few reached out for her.She could not reach back. Through the nothingness, these few fought for her. She could not fight back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few cared for her. She could not care back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few spoke out for her, shattering the frozen silence over and over again. She could not speak out for herself…. “*I hope this may give some comfort to people who need it. There are good, caring people (whether outside or within yourself, if need be) and you do deserve to be cared for and supported as much as anyone else does."From “Nothing”, one of the short stories in “Fight! Rabbit! Fight!

The question is there in each silence. The question is there in the space between you. But you cannot bring it aloud.

Nature has given to men one tongue but two ears that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.

Valentine reminds us that to be fully human is to be both a story teller and a story dweller."--- Christina Meldrum, author of Madapple and Amaryllis in Blueberry

I never argue with a person; with love, I listen in deep silence.

Some things should never be said. Not out loud in clear, simple words. You talk around them. You leave gaps and blanks. You use other words and talk in curves and arcs for the worst things because you need to keep them like mist. Words are dangerous. Like a spell, if you name the mist, call out all of the words that describe it sharp and clear, you turn it solid, into something that no one should ever hold in their hands. Better that it stays like water, slipping between your fingers.

The easiest way to get touch with this universal power is through silent Prayer. Shut your eyes, shut your mouth, and open your heart. This is the golden rule of prayer. Prayer should be soundless words coming forth from the centre of your heart filled with love.

Never allow yourself to believe you should be silent.

You must be more alive than life.You must see darkness danceand hear silence sing.You must be more awake than lightfor we aren’t born sleepingand we shouldn’t live sleeping.Only then will death’s slumberbecome sweet.

Sometimes I feel like I’m not solid. I’m hollow. There’s nothing behind my eyes. I’m a negative of a person. All I want is blackness, blackness and silence.

It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth, in other words to silence.

Count the times. The number of times you have seen the silence of another world seep though a crack. The number of times you have heard the sea trying to escape from the blue painted wall.

And then there's silence. Though is silence the right word when, through the quiet, the air is so charged, electricity crackles deafeningly without making a sound?

There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say--unless you insist on saying it.

A thousand prayers every minute everywhere and what does God ever say back? Nothing! Because silence never lies. Silence is God's final advantage. Silence is the purest form of harmony. Everyone ought to try it.

Silence gives you freedom to talk with yourself fearlessly

The silence is becoming more poisonous and I have no one to talk with, not even my own self

We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.

Silence can be lovely or disturbing, depending on the source.

Silence is pure and holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking.

Not only are animals unable to avail themselves of language to assert their own rights, but many fewer humans have a clear sense of kinship with animals than have a clear sense of kinship with other humans. Among beings with subjective states of awareness, animals are the untouchable caste, those whom human others would rather not acknowledge, let alone render assistance.

Stop your whining. If you are frightened, be silent. Whining is for prey. It attracts predators. And you are not prey.

There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone.

Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.

Stigma's power lies in silence. The silence that persists when discussion and action should be taking place. The silence one imposes on another for speaking up on a taboo subject, branding them with a label until they are rendered mute or preferably unheard.

Be silent & you are considered on idiot. Be voluble & you are considered a nuisance. The perfect balance between speaking and remaining silent makes you a gentleman!

The pause - that impressive silence that eloquent silence that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words howsoever felicitous could accomplish it.

And the wind falls silent, and the birds fall silent, and the wild cherry trees no longer shiver and creek.

And then something happened. It was a fragment of time, a breath of time. It was like being in a car in pouring rain and driving under an overpass, and for just that second there is a profound, powerful sense of reprieve- the utter silence of non-rain.

It is only through silence that truth can be said, because it is only through silence that the truth is heard.

When a man goes silent on his ways and plans, you must ponder!

Silence is the best reply to those who provoke you. Smile is like icing on the cake.

She gazed at him alluringly and grinned. No further words were necessary.

Humph.” She peered down suspiciously as he parted the leaves to reveal the choke. “That doesn’t look very tasty.”“That’s because it isn’t,” he said. “Pay heed: the artichoke is a shy vegetable. She covers herself in spine-tipped leaves that must be carefully peeled away, and underneath shields her treasure with a barricade o’ soft needles. They must be tenderly, but firmly, scraped aside. Ye must be bold, for if yer not, she’ll never reveal her soft heart.”He finished cutting away the thistles and placed the small, tender heart on the center of her plate.She wrinkled her nose. “That’s it? But it’s so small.”“Ah, and d’ye judge a thing solely upon size alone?”She made a choking sound.

When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response.The gray area between yes and no.Silence.

Writers shouldn't fear criticism. Instead, they should fear silence. Criticism is healthy. It gets people thinking about your work and, even better, it gets them talking and arguing. But as for silence -- it is the greatest killer of writers. So if you hate a book and want to hurt it -- don't talk about it. And if you hate my books -- please, for God's sake, shout it from the hills!

There, there, sweetin’,” he murmured into her hair.“He loved me, he truly did,” she gasped.“I know he did,” Michael said.“And I loved him.”“Mm-hmm.”She raised her head, glaring angrily. “You don’t even believe in love. Why are you agreeing with me?”He laughed.“Because”—he leaned down and licked at the tears on her cheeks, his lips brushing softly against her sensitive skin as he spoke, “ye’ve bewitched and bespelled me, my sweet Silence, didn’t ye know? I’ll agree that the sky is pink, that the moon is made o’ marzipan and sugared raisins, and that mermaids swim the muddy waters o’ the Thames, if ye’ll only stop weepin’. Me chest breaks apart and gapes wide open when I see tears in yer pretty eyes. Me lungs, me liver, and me heart cannot stand to be thus exposed.”She stopped breathing. She simply inhaled and stopped, looking at him in wonder. His lips were quirked in a mocking smile, but his eyes—his fathomless black eyes—seemed to hold a great pain as if his strong chest really had been split open.

A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side.

It was normal for it to rain, but in October- who could forget the rains of October?- now this disturbingly silent rain was falling. That was so nebulous that it was pretty; that, if it had not been wet, no one would have believed it was raining; that was so slow that it was possible to follow its fall with one's eyes. That which villagers called 'the rains of October' was the accumulation of the serenity of such a life. Eyes almost broke into tears on looking at the sun subdividing itself, at the end of the afternoon, in each drop of that snail's-pace precipitation, as if the great star had dissolved each day an infinitesimal bit more.

What is this life! you cry out. Only silence answers, and it is eloquent. Shining eyes open in the darkness, the eyes of that face, smiling too much and too long. Without a word, that smile coerces from you an old question: Was it all so useless? The smile pushes up at its edges, too rigid to be real. You cannot look away as it widens past all natural proportion. There is nothing left but that big smile. It is the last thing you see: a great gaping mouth like the entrance to a carnival ride. Then: the sense of being swallowed. That is the story; that is the plot of our lives.

Hold your pen and spare your voice.