Stillness Quotes - Page 2

Life’s most precious moments are not all loud or uproarious. Silence and stillness has its own virtues.

People who live in the night are acquainted with all kinds of quiet. There’s quiet enough to hear the distant traffic. Quiet enough to hear your breathing. Quiet enough to hear a lover’s heartbeat. There’s please-god-don’t-let-me-die quiet, and can’t-remember-her-name quiet. Is-he-lying quiet and can’t-make-rent quiet. There’s the quiet that inspires poets, and quiet that torments the lonely.

In fact, the room was so quiet you might have heard a drop of paint splash.

The most powerful forces in the universe are infinite. Love, imagination, intuition, stillness. Then why should we define our soul?

I honour the clarity of the present moment, and the stillness at the centre of being (mine & others), even in the midst of so much doing.

The girl was a gypsy before an illness took control of her legs, now she watches in awe the world pass by whilst stillness teaches her about inner strength.

Time passes so fast. Make time to be still.

In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow. And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.

After my first experience via yoga, I became incredibly focused on experiencing that sense of stillness again. The stillness that reminded me that I could be a better person, a better friend, a better citizen of the world, as well as a better businessman.

Sometimes you just have to turn off the lights, sit in the dark, and see what happens inside of you.

In the morning stillness, when the world is just waking up and your conscious mind hasn't fully taken over, you may feel a connection or passageway to another world, and a feeling that something is about to happen in yours. It's like a quiet storm is coming. You can feel the distant rumble of thunder on the horizon, yet you have no idea of the deluge your life is about to experience.

It is better to be still than to speak when you are angry.

Nature, take my breath with you; renew it with the wild breeze and fill my being up with so much soul, ego learns to fade away.

Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy. There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.

Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same no-thing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence.

There was a sudden stillness like the gap between ticks on a clock, but the next tick never coming.

No matter what kind of circumstances come together, if one’s stillness is not shaken and his goal does not change; he is known to have attained religion.

There are seasons when to be still demands immeasurably higher strength than to act.

Transition isn't pretty, but stagnation is hideous.

The highest goodness is like water.Water is beneficial to all things but not contend. It stays in places which others despise. Therefore it is near Tao. The weakest things in the world can overmatch the strongest things in the world. Nothing in the world can be compared to water for its weak and yielding nature; yet in attacking the hard and strong nothing proves better than water. For there is no alternative to it. The weak can overcome and the yielding can overcame the hard. This all the world knows but does not practice. This again is the practice of ‘wu-wel’ and nonviolence. Water may be weak, pliable, fluid, but its action is not one of running away from an obstacle. On the contrary, it gives at the point of resistance, envelopes the object and passes beyond it. Ultimately it will wear down the hardest rock. Water is a more telling symbol than land… crossing the river to get to the other side is, again, attaining the state of enlightenment.

...unquestioning automatonsblindly marching to the beat -an eerie crunching soundhoards of shuffling feet...(from silent moments)

Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn't get to have.

Being still does not mean don't move. It means move in peace.

Sometimes it's hard to look at a flower, when your dying inside.

I create beautiful art, so I can look back on the life my body fell short of in such a way that it brings me peace.

Through our awareness, we can open the inheritance of our qualities or talents, and behind that, reside in the stillness of being, present in the sanctity of universal love.

When you gaze out on a quiet, peaceful meadow, next to a still pond, under a motionless blue sky, you wonder how the noisy, busy cacophony of life could have arisen from such silent, motionless beginning.

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.

[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.

Why are we afraid of the silence that ensues after our death? Wasn’t it the same silence we endured before birth? Isn’t it the same silence we revel in when we are completely immersed in the present moment? Let us not be afraid.

The mind provides a person with the mental fortitude to survive any physical or spiritual crisis. For the present time, I am satisfying myself by building a little shop in the back of my mind, a place where stillness resides and a jangle of thoughts can come and visit. I am building a room of my own, a room that I can retreat to when needed, a place where I am always welcomed regardless of the trappings of this ordinary and finite life. I do not need much as far as earthy rewards, but I certainly will not spurn food, drink, companionship, love, affection, friendship, or other physical, emotional, spiritual, aesthetic, and sensuous pleasures that find their way to my humble doorstep.

You remain so silent,as carried away,through mist of your thoughts,so dark and so deep,and even awake same as when asleep,waiting for enlightenment of a newborn day.I'm bound to your silence,to the core i'm bound,to delicate stillness,so cruel and so tender,that despite of danger,soul yearns to surrender,to that mesmerizing absence of the sound.I resign everything i once knew so clear,throwing in the wind fragments of my past,they are worth so little,they're nothing but dust,nothing to remember,and nothing to fear...

Be calm...calm as a calm lagoon, then you will look beautiful as a beautiful calm lagoon crowned by the Moon and sheltered by the brilliance of the stars reclaiming your royalty of regal life...

Don’t ever stop believing in your own personal transformation. It is still happening even on the days you may not realize it or feel like it.

And it was so still. The silence of the fields seemed to enter and move familiarly through the house. The wind used the open hall. He felt that he was in a mysterious, quiet, cool danger. It was necessary to do what?...to talk.("Death Of A Traveling Salesman")

Attain complete emptiness,Hold fast to stillness.Understanding the ordinary: Mind opens.Mind opening leads to compassion,Compassion to nobility,Nobility to heavenliness,Heavenliness to TAO. TAO endures. Your body dies.There is no danger.

To separate yourself from your weakness and look at it objectively is a very powerful thing.

Words were his delight; Hers, a gay gracefulnessOf dancing and moving. But when to the place Of deep loving (Starlight at midnight)At last they came, Their full communion And consummation,Their complete sphere,Was stillness for her,Silence for him.

It's okay that I got sick, I suddenly realize. If Lyme hadn't taken me down so radically, I wouldn't have learned about stillness. I would not have discovered my enormous capacity to endure. I would have not have embraced this deeply contemplative place within my own being.

As spiritual searchers we need to become freer and freer of the attachment to our own smallness in which we get occupied with me-me-me. Pondering on large ideas or standing in front of things which remind us of a vast scale can free us from acquisitiveness and competitiveness and from our likes and dislikes. If we sit with an increasing stillness of the body, and attune our mind to the sky or to the ocean or to the myriad stars at night, or any other indicators of vastness, the mind gradually stills and the heart is filled with quiet joy. Also recalling our own experiences in which we acted generously or with compassion for the simple delight of it without expectation of any gain can give us more confidence in the existence of a deeper goodness from which we may deviate. (39)

So it is said, for him who understands Heavenly joy, life is the working of Heaven; death is the transformation of things. In stillness, he and the yin share a single Virtue; in motion, he and the yang share a single flow.

Much of our suffering is caused by our false perceptions and attachment to mental images. We assume things to be true without really knowing whether they are true or not, then create a world of hurt for ourselves and others.