Silence Quotes - Page 32

• After having struggled madly to solve all problems, after having suffered on the heights of despair, in the supreme hour of revelation, you will find that the only answer, the only reality, is silence.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Reality, Despair, Answers

  14 Copy quote

• We wake in the night, to stereophonic silence.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Night

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.91, BookBaby

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The hush comes with the deepening of Autumn; but it comes gradually. Our ears are attuned to it, day by quieter day. But even now, if one awakens in the deep darkness of the small hours, one can hear it, a foretaste of Winter silence. It’s a little painful now, and a little lonely because it is so strange.

  Hal Borland

  Lonely, Autumn, Winter

  4 Copy quote

• Concerning the factors of silence, solitude and darkness, we can only say that they are actually elements in the production of the infantile anxiety from which the majority of human beings have never become quite free.

  Sigmund Freud

  Anxiety, Darkness, Solitude

  Sigmund Freud (1997). “Writings on Art and Literature”, p.229, Stanford University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you cannot hold the body still, you cannot hold the brain still. If you do not know the silence of the body, you cannot understand the silence of the mind. Action and silence have to go together. If there is action, there must also be silence. If there is silence, there can be conscious action and not just motion.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Brain, Mind, Together

  8 Copy quote

• Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence; he has no reason to give himself airs about it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Believe, Air, Giving

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.82, Ravenio Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school.

  Hermann Hesse

  School, House, Sound

  8 Copy quote

• Money...buys privacy, silence. The less money you have, the noisier it is; the thinner your walls, the closer your neighbors.... The first thing you notice when you step into the house or apartment of a rich person is how quiet it is.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Wall, House, Firsts

  5 Copy quote

• The uncomfortable truth seems to be that the amount of talk by women has been measured less against the amount of men's talk than against the expectation of female silence.

  Gloria Steinem

  Men, Expectations, Female

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.281, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Silence is all the genius a fool has.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Genius, Fool, Silence Is

  Zora Neale Hurston (1995). “Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories: Jonah's Gourd Vine / Their Eyes Were Watching God / Moses, Man of the Mountain / Seraph on the Suwanee / Selected Stories”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance. In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Acting, Together

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.276, CUP Archive

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• What else is there to make life tolerable? We stand on the shore of an ocean, crying to the night and to emptiness. Sometimes a voice of one drowning, and in a moment the silence returns. The world seems to me quite dreadful, the unhappiness of many people is very great, and I often wonder how they all endure it. It is usually the central thing around which their lives are built, and I suppose if they did not live most of their lives in the things of the moment, they would not be able to go on.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Ocean, Night

  11 Copy quote

• Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you—silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life. Share it, because everything shared grows fast.

  Rajneesh

  Meditation, Serenity, Trying

  17 Copy quote

• In this noisy, restless, bewildering age, there is a great need for quietness of spirit. Even in our communion with God we are so busy presenting our problems, asking for help, seeking relief that we leave no moments of silence to listen for God's answers. By practice we can learn to submerge our spirits beneath the turbulent surface waves of life and reach that depth of our being where all is still, where no storms can reach us. Here only can we forget the material world and its demands on us.

  Alice Hegan Rice

  Wave Of Life, Asking For Help, Practice

  Alice Hegan Rice (2013). “My Pillow Book”, p.29, Read Books Ltd

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• All my days have I grown up among the Sages and I have found naught better for a man than silence.

  Gamaliel

  Men, Sage, Found

  19 Copy quote

• The primary virtue is: hold your tongue; who knows how to keep quiet is close to God.

  Cato the Younger

  Tongue, Quiet, Virtue

  30 Copy quote

• You will never be an inwardly religious and devout man unless you pass over in silence the shortcomings of your fellow men, and diligently examine your own weaknesses.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Religious, Men, Weakness

  23 Copy quote

• Born in elevators and supermarkets, Muzak has spread to restaurants, hotels, airplanes, telephone hold services, and waiting rooms. The public-relations experts believe that human beings fear silence - that is, the absence of constantly imposed direction. It is further believed that if we can be relieved of our fears, we will gain enough self-confidence to buy, eat, vote, fly, or simply go on living.

  John Ralston Saul

  Believe, Airplane, Self Confidence

  John Ralston Saul (2002). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.211, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• If something controls you in a way that puzzles you, think of it as a mystery. Mysteries are best approached by closing your eyes and mouth to experience darkness and silence. I find new and healing images in that dark, silent place away from emotions that control me. Do not be afraid to close your eyes and be silent in prayer, meditation, rest or sleep. In those states you may rediscover a new self. Then your life, time and thoughts will become yours again and you can live your unique myth.

  Bernie Siegel

  Prayer, Sleep, Eye

  4 Copy quote

• Silence is sorrow's best food.

  James Russell Lowell

  Sorrow, Best Food, Silence Is

  James Russell Lowell (1898). “Poems of James Russell Lowell With Biographical Sketch by Nathan Haskell Dole”, p.438, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no doubt that sorrow brings one down in the world. The aristocratic privilege of silence belongs, you soon find out, to only the happy state- or, at least, to the state when pain keeps within bounds.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Pain, Doubt, Sorrow

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The violent illiteracies of the graffiti, the clenched silence of the adolescent, the nonsense cries from the stage-happening, are resolutely strategic. The insurgent and the freak-out have broken off discourse with a cultural system which they despise as a cruel, antiquated fraud. They will not bandy words with it. Accept, even momentarily, the conventions of literate linguistic exchange, and you are caught in the net of the old values, of the grammars that can condescend or enslave.

  George Steiner

  Broken, Society, Graffiti

  George Steiner (1987). “George Steiner: A Reader”, p.432, Oxford University Press on Demand

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• I couldn't imagine a day without music. It relaxes and stimulates me in equal measure and I hate the sound of silence - the concept, I mean, not the track by Simon and Garfunkel.

  Charles Kennedy

  Hate, Mean, Track

  "Charles Kennedy" by Will Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. April 14, 2005.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us. It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly, or the conversations among the cognoscenti, those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.

  Anna Quindlen

  Sex, Grief, Funeral

  Anna Quindlen (2004). “Loud and Clear”, p.157, Random House

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf... For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Dust, Two, Drawing

  52 Copy quote