Silence
see also Solitude
- As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.--Benjamin Franklin
- The cruelest lies are often told in silence.--Robert Louis Stevenson ("Virginibus Puerisque")
- The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.--Marianne Moore
- Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live.--Shelley Winters (In Theatre Arts, June 1956)
- The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart.--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- In ... silence we find a new energy and a real unity. God's energy becomes our, allowing us to perform things well.--Mother Teresa
- It is better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt--Anonymous
- It's very important in life to know when to shut up. You should not be afraid of silence.--Alex Trebek
- Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.--Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
- Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.--Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
- Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.--Dionysius the Elder
- Lying is done with words and also with silence.--Adrienne Rich
- Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.--Harvey Fierstein
- A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side.--Anne Morrow Lindberg
- Nothing more enhances authority than silence. It is the crowning virtue of the strong, the refuge of the weak, the modesty of the proud, the pride of the humble, the prudence of the wise, and the sense of fools.--Charles de Gaulle
- Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.--Ursula K. LeGuin (A Wizard of Earthsea)
- Only in the oasis of silence can we drink deeply from the inner cup of wisdom.--Sue Patton Thoele
- A properly kept silence is a beautiful thing; it is nothing less than the father of very wise thoughts.--Diodicus
- Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.--Myrtle Reed (Old Rose and Silver)
- Silence fertilizes the deep place where personality grows. A life with a peaceful center can weather all storms.--Norman Vincent Peale
- Silence gives us a new way of looking at something.--Mother Teresa
- Silence is a true friend who never betrays.--Confucius
- Silence is one of the deepest disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification. One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let God be our justifier. We don't need to straighten others out.--Richard J. Foster ("Seeking the Kingdom")
- Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.--Thomas Carlyle
- Silence is the mother of truth.--Benjamin Disraeli (Tancred Or, The New Crusade)
- Silence is Wisdom where Speaking is Folly.--William Penn (Some Fruits of Solitude)
- Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego.--Jean Arp
- This gathered worship, as Quakers call it, is not only absence of noise. Gathered worship springs from the reverent, silent expectation that God will come among the people. The silence deepens as we feel ourselves drawn beautifully to God and each other. Our hearts and souls burst with thanksgiving-a thanksgiving best expressed by silence. Silence growing from awe is the natural human response to hints of the Divine.--J. Brent Bill (Holy Silence: the Gift of Quaker Spirituality)
- Too many people are afraid of silence. It is as if something has to be happening all the time. But often, with silence, there is more happening. There is a reflection on what was really said to us, what was really meant by the remarks, and, yes, perhaps some passage of thought between that person and ourselves.--Kreskin (The Amazing) (in Success Secrets of Super Achievers by Stovall)
- True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.--William Penn
- Truth is violated by falsehood, but outraged by silence.--Anonymous
- Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful and attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project. We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self.--M. Basil Pennington
- We can do more work in the silence than we can by moving the lips and letting the mouth make a continuous noise. That interferes with our own thinking as well as with other people's. There is a stillness in a thinker's mind; there is a quietness in a thinker's presence, where even words are entirely unnecessary.--Robert Beesley
- We have all probably noted those sudden moments of quiet - those strange and almost miraculous moments in the life of a big city when there is a cessation of traffic noise - just an instant when there is only the sound of footsteps which serves to emphasize a sudden peace. During those seconds it is possible to notice the sunlight, to notice our fellow humans, to take breath.--Dorothy Day
- We in the "developed" world seem to have many auditory strategies that insulate us from the presence of silence, simplicity, and solitude. When I return to Western culture after time in desert, mountain or forest, I discover how we have filled our world with a multiplicity of noises, a symphony of forgetfulness that keeps our won thoughts and realizations, feelings and intuitions out of audible range.--Joan Halifax The Fruitful Darkness)
- We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature--trees, flowers, grass--grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we need silence to be able to touch souls.--Mother Teresa
- You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.--John Morley (Rousseau)
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