Silence Quotes - Page 39

• Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

  W. H. Auden

  Dog, Grief, Cutting

  "Funeral Blues" l. 1 (1936)

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• All which isn't singing is mere talking... and all talking's to oneself alone but the very song of (as mountains feel and lovers) singing is silence.

  e. e. cummings

  Song, Talking, Singing

  "73 poems (32)". Book by E. E. Cummings, 1962.

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• Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking! ... I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

  William Hazlitt

  Heart, Thinking, Blue

  William Hazlitt (1871). “Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners”, p.250

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• If death is this brilliant slide, this high, fine music felt as pure vibration, this plunging float in wind and silence, it's not so bad.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Wind, Vibrations, Slides

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• As the romance of manned space exploration has waned, the drive today is to find our living, thinking counterparts in the universe. For all the excitement, however, the search betrays a profound melancholy - a lonely species in a merciless universe anxiously awaits an answering voice amid utter silence.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Lonely, Thinking, Space

  "Are We Alone in the Universe?". jewishworldreview.com. December 30, 2011.

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• There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.

  David Hume

  Morning, Night, May

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.339, 谷月社

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• The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes.

  Ray Bradbury

  Eye, Breathing, Moss

  Ray Bradbury (2013). “Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales”, p.34, Harper Collins

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• [As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Mind, Way

  "A Qualified Farewell". Essay by Raymond Chandler (early 1950's), published in "The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler" edited by Frank MacShane, 1976.

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• I think the silence would be good with me, and not interacting with people would be okay. But not being able to move outside of the space would be hard. Not being able to walk around - the stillness of my body, physically - that would be the challenge.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Moving, Thinking, Space

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break.

  Philip Larkin

  Water, Black, Ships

  Philip Larkin (2012). “The Less Deceived”, p.12, Faber & Faber

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• The reverberation often exceeds through silence the sound that sets it off; the reaction occasionally outdoes by way of repose the event that stimulated it; and the past not uncommonly takes a while to happen, and some long time to figure out.

  Ken Kesey

  Past, Long, Sound

  Ken Kesey (2006). “Sometimes a Great Notion”, p.485, Penguin

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• A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,The burning lake turns into a forest pool,The fire subsides into rings of water,A sunlit silence.

  Theodore Roethke

  Heart, Fire, Lakes

  Theodore Roethke (1975). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, Anchor Books

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• There I was out in the barn playing midwife to a pregnant mare. I remember sitting there, spinning yarn in the light of a little oil lamp, a city girl who knew nothing about farming, sitting on the deel beside that mother in pain, already beginning the birthing process. All around me there was darkness and perfect silence, except for the mother's pain. It was as if the war didn't exist in those hours.

  Diet Eman

  Girl, Mother, Pain

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• I hate the countrie's dirt and manners, yet I love the silence; I embrace the wit; A courtship, flowing here in full tide. But loathe the expense, the vanity and pride. No place each way is happy.

  William Habington

  Country, Hate, Pride

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• The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Stars, Darkness, Heard

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.110, Simon and Schuster

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• We wake and whisper awhile, But, the day gone by, Silence and sleep like fields Of amaranth lie.

  Walter de La Mare

  Lying, Sleep, Days Gone By

  Walter De La Mare (2007). “The Listeners and Other Poems”, p.34, Wildside Press LLC

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• Silence is the only answer you should give to the fools. Where ignorance speaks, intelligence should not give advices.

  Benito Mussolini

  Ignorance, Giving, Advice

  "The Book of Italian Wisdom" by Antonio Santi, Citadel Press, (p. 87), 2003.

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• I drop in from the sky disturbing the silence only momentarily, then leaving the ancient land once more to converse with the sky. It's my home and all I need.

  Toni Onley

  Travel, Home, Land

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• The purpose of sound is silence.

  Jill Purce

  Sound, Purpose

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• Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the mathematics; for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws . Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the Christian religion, which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put an end to the prestiges of the false Gods , itself reveres those Magi who came from the East, guided by a Star , to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle.

  Albert Pike

  Christian, Stars, Lying

  Albert Pike (2013). “Morals and Dogma”, p.751, Simon and Schuster

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• Tall windows show Infinity; And, hard reality, The candles weep and pry and dance Like lives mocked at by Chance. The rooms are vast as Sleep within; When once I ventured in, Chill Silence, like a surging sea, Slowly enveloped me.

  Edith Sitwell

  Sleep, Reality, Sea

  Edith Sitwell (Dame), Elizabeth Salter, Allanah Harper (1976). “Edith Sitwell: fire of the mind : an anthology”, Michael Joseph

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• Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason ; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, I mean a necessary dialectical tool.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Mean, Heart, Feelings

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1888). “System of Economical Contradictions: Or, The Philosophy of Misery”

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• A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.

  Toni Morrison

  Ideas, Desire, Purpose

  Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993

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• Silence is a great peacemaker.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Peacemaker, Silence Is

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.2429, Delphi Classics

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• More hearts are breaking in this world of ours Than one would say. In distant villages And solitudes remote, where winds have wafted The barbed seeds of love, or birds of passage Scattered them in their flight, do they take root, And grow in silence, and in silence perish.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Heart, Wind, Roots

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1849). “The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ; Complete in One Volume”, p.73

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