Mute Quotes - Page 5

• Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --

  Sylvia Plath

  Light, Sky, Kitchen

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• Now all the mute objects of my life seem to tell my story, to stretch back in time, if I look closely enough.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Looks, Stories, Enough

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2003). “Middlesex”, p.397, A&C Black

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• The world, the human world, is bound together not by protons and electrons, but by stories. Nothing has meaning in itself: all the objects in the world would be shards of bare mute blankness, spinning wildly out of orbit, if we didn't bind them together with stories.

  Brian Morton

  Together, Orbit, Would Be

  Brian Morton (1999). “Starting Out in the Evening”, Berkley Publishing Group

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• Extreme torture is mute, and so we sat silent, petrified, like columns of marble buried under the sand of an earthquake. Neither wished to listen to the other because our heart-threads had become weak and even breathing would have broken them.

  Khalil Gibran

  Heart, Breathing, Earthquakes

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting. Sometimes you hear a distant refrain. What does it mean, you ask, who is singing? A childlike sun grows warm. A grandson and a great-grandson are born. You are led by the hand once again. The names of the rivers remain with you. How endless those rivers seem! Your fields lie fallow, The city towers are not as they were. You stand at the threshold mute.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Running, Spring, Lying

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Forget”

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• Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Sadness, Joy, Feelings

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• But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.

  Herman Melville

  Joy, Down And, Woe

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.366

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• I didn't know how to explain what I meant; sociopathy wasn't just being emotionally deaf, it was being emotionally mute, too. I felt like the characters on our muted TV, waving their hands and screaming and never saying a word out loud.

  Dan Wells

  Character, Hands, Just Being

  Dan Wells (2010). “I Am Not A Serial Killer”, p.43, Macmillan

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• Trust thou thy Love: if she be proud, is she not sweet?
  Trust thou thy love: if she be mute, is she not pure?
  Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet-
  Fail, Sun and Breath!-yet, for thy peace, she shall endure.

  John Ruskin

  Life, Sweet, Hands

  John Ruskin (1903). “The Works of John Ruskin”

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• He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy. He, the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.

  Saint Augustine

  Christmas, Mother, Hands

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• Thanks, sir; all the rest is mute.

  William Shakespeare

  Sympathy, Thank You, Teacher

  William Shakespeare (1772). “The Works of Shakespeare in Twelve Volumes: Collated with the Oldest Copies and Corrected: with Notes Explanatory and Critical”, p.246

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• I simply wanted to experience the presence of this man who had revolutionized my understanding. After a while we sat in silence, gazing at the barren canyon walls. And the mute desert seemed to carry on our conversation for us.

  Huston Smith

  Wall, Men, Silence

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• the mute protest in your own bones

  George Orwell

  Bones, Protest

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.60, Arcturus Publishing

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• C’mon, sweetie, you can say it. (Delphine) (She moved his mouth playfully with her hands.) You don’t suck, Delphine. I…you. C’mon, Jericho. I only bite in the bedroom. You can do this. I know you’re not really mute. (Delphine)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Hands, Mouths, Bedroom

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• What an incredible thing! How much less they had than other human beings. Mentally retarded, deaf, mute - and still eagerly sanding benches.

  Daniel Keyes

  Benches, Incredibles, Deaf

  Daniel Keyes (2012). “Flowers For Algernon”, p.142, Hachette UK

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• A cat’s body can sustain a lot of damage without actually dying,” Lucas said, his voice as deep as the rumble of the earth itself. “You just think about that before you so much as scratch yourself without permission.” Ryan gulped and nodded, still mute.

  Rachel Vincent

  Cat, Thinking, Voice

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• Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room." Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.

  Emma Donoghue

  Goodbye, Doors, Looks

  Emma Donoghue (2015). “Room: Picador Classic”, p.225, Pan Macmillan

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• No, I don’t have to tell a soul about this, I promised myself. When you are a kid, you don’t know yet that a secret, like an animal, can evolve. Like an animal, a secret can develop a self-preserving intelligence. Shaglike, mute and thick, a knowledge with a fur: your secret.

  Karen Russell

  Kids, Animal, Self

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• Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.

  Annie Dillard

  Block, Silence, World

  Annie Dillard (2016). “Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters”, p.65, Canongate Books

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• Interested in some ‘undercover’ work? And to think, I was actually having a tender thought about you. Do yourself a favor, Steele…Become mute.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Thinking, Favors, Undercover

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2005). “Bad Attitude”, p.232, Simon and Schuster

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• When you look into the faces of these quiet creatures who don't know how to tell stories--who are mute, who can't make themselves heard, who fade into the woodwork, who only think of the perfect answer after the fact, after they're back at home, who can never think of a story that anyone else will find interesting--is there not more depth and more meaning in them? You can see every letter of every untold story swimming on their faces, and all the signs of silence, dejection, and even defeat. You can even imagine your own face in those faces, can't you?

  Orhan Pamuk

  Home, Swimming, Thinking

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• Have I missed a national holiday? There must be celebrations in the streets for you to be home at this hour of the day." "I'm calling it Summerset Goes Mute Day. The city's gone mad with joy.

  Nora Roberts

  Home, Holiday, Cities

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• Say she rail; why, I'll tell her plain She sings as sweetly as a nightingale. Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear As morning roses newly wash'd with dew. Say she be mute and will not speak a word; Then I'll commend her volubility, and say she uttereth piercing eloquence.

  William Shakespeare

  Morning, Rose, Dew

  'The Taming Of The Shrew' (1592) act 2, sc. 1, l. 171

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• The observations and encounters of a devotee of solitude and silence are at once less distinct and more penetrating than those of the sociable man; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Images and perceptions which might otherwise be easily dispelled by a glance, a laugh, an exchange of comments, concern him unduly, they sink into mute depths, take on significance, become experiences, adventures, emotions.

  Thomas Mann

  Adventure, Sadness, Men

  Thomas Mann (1999). “Death in Venice, Tonio Kroger, and Other Writings: Thomas Mann”, p.115, A&C Black

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• Sonnet XXV Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own: I wavered through the streets, among Objects: Nothing mattered or had a name: The world was made of air, which waited. I knew rooms full of ashes, Tunnels where the moon lived, Rough warehouses that growled 'get lost', Questions that insisted in the sand. Everything was empty, dead, mute, Fallen abandoned, and decayed: Inconceivably alien, it all Belonged to someone else - to no one: Till your beauty and your poverty Filled the autumn plentiful with gifts.

  Pablo Neruda

  Autumn, Moon, Tunnels

  Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XXV”

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