Silent Quotes - Page 14

• Set wide the window. Let me drink the day. I loved light ever, light in eye and brain No tapers mirrored in long palace floors, Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles, But just the common dusty wind-blown day That roofs earth's millions.

  Edith Wharton

  Eye, Light, Wind

  Edith Wharton (2002). “Artemis to Actaeon and More: Selected Verse”, p.16, Wildside Press LLC

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• For in the night, unseen, a single warrior, In sombre harness mailed, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, The rampart wall has scaled. He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, The dark and silent room, And as he entered, darker grew, and deeper, The silence and the gloom.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Wall, Warrior, Dark

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (185?). “The Poetical Works of Henry W. Longfellow”, p.471

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• Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Air, Water, Bird

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1988). “Selected Poems”, p.49, Penguin

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• Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Lonely, Winter, Bird

  1923 Harp-Weaver and Other Poems,'Sonnet19: What lips my lips have kissed'.

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• He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Real, Unseen, Speech

  Thomas Carlyle (1840). “Works”

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• The American psychologist Julian Jaynes, in a controversial study on the origin of consciousness, argued that the bicameral mind - in which one of the hemispheres becomes specialized in silent reading - is a late development in humankind's evolution, and that the process by which this function develops is still changing.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Mind, Development

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

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• Coldly, sadly descends The autumn evening. The Field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent; hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play!

  Matthew Arnold

  Autumn, Boys, Play

  'Rugby Chapel, November 1857'

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• We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of authorities than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep silent at man's behest when God commands us to speak. For it is, and must remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man.

  Martin Niemoller

  Men, Arms, Speak

  "Religion in the Reich" by Michael Power, (p. 142), 1939.

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• A silence reigns upon the air, Upon the pansies by the shore, Upon the violets, pale and fair, Upon the willow, bending o'er; The reeds and lilies silent grow, The dark green waters silent sleep, Save when the summer breezes blow, Or silvery minnows leap.

  George Arnold

  Summer, Sleep, Dark

  George Arnold (1866). “Drift: A Sea-shore Idyl : and Other Poems”, p.81

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• Everything I loved had been dead for two centuries - or, as in the case of Graeco-Roman classicism, for two milenniums. I am never a part of anything around me - in everything I am an outsider. Should I find it possible to crawl backward through the Halls of Time to that age which is nearest my own fancy, I should doubtless be bawled out of the coffee-houses for heresy in religion, or else lampooned by John Dennis till I found refuge in the deep, silent Thames, that covers many another unfortunate.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Coffee, Two, House

  Letter to "The Keicomolo" - Kleiner, Cole, and Moe (October 1916), in "Selected Letters I, 1911-1924" edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, (p. 27), 1964.

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• The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.

  Stefan Zweig

  Art, Book, Eternal

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• Thou silent power, whose welcome sway charms every anxious thought away; in whose divine oblivion drown'd, sore pain and weary toil grow mild, love is with kinder looks beguiled, and Grief forgets her fondly cherish'd wound; oh, whither hast thou flown, indulgent god? God of kind shadows and of healing dews, whom dost thou touch with thy Lethaean rod? Around whose temples now thy opiate airs diffuse?

  Mark Akenside

  Pain, Grief, Healing

  Mark Akenside (2012). “Poetical Works of Akenside”, p.285, tredition

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• For Humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

  James Russell Lowell

  Yesterday, Hands, Humanity

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.190, Delphi Classics

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• All Nature's wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.

  John Muir

  Heart, Volcanoes, Earthquakes

  John Muir, Peter Browning (1988). “John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations”, p.66, Great West Books

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• Pale in her fading bowers the Summer stands,
  Like a new Niobe with claspèd hands,
  Silent above the flowers, her children lost,
  Slain by the arrows of the early Frost.

  Richard Henry Stoddard

  Summer, Children, Flower

  "Ode". "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.

  Edward Abbey

  Dream, Tombstone, Sky

  Edward Abbey (1954). “Slumgullion stew: an Edward Abbey reader”, E P Dutton

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• About what one can not speak, one must remain silent.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Speak, Can Not

  "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". Book by Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1922.

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• There are few who would need advisers, if they were only accustomed to appeal to themselves in their calmest, holiest moments. If, when embarrassed with doubt as to any course of action, they would turn aside from the immediate tumult of the world, and from the vain speaking of those who "darken counsel by words without knowledge;" and would then commune with their hearts alone, at night, the heavens their silent counsellors, they would act not always in accordance with the wise men of this world, but with that wisdom which bringeth peace.

  Arthur Helps

  Wise, Wisdom, Heart

  Sir Arthur Helps (1883). “Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd”

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• I dream of silent verses where the rhyme glides noiseless as an oar.

  Richard Aldington

  Dream, Rhyme, Oar

  Richard Aldington (1928). “Collected poems”

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• I don't think I've ever written about me. I'm not a character in any of my plays, except that boy, that silent boy that turns up in Three Tall Women.

  Edward Albee

  Character, Boys, Thinking

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.280, Da Capo Press

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• Can storied urn, or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

  Thomas Gray

  Dust, Voice, Fleeting

  'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' (1751) l. 41

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• What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can speak for those who are silent.

  Stephen Spender

  Writing, Voice, Luxury

  Stephen Spender (1978). “The thirties and after: poetry, politics, people 1933-1970”, Random House Inc

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• Weak logic, inconsistencies and alienation from the people are common features of authoritarianism. The relentless attempts of totalitarian regimes to prevent free thought and new ideas and the persistent assertion of their own rightness bring on them an intellectual stasis which they project on to the nation at large. Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Ideas, People, Intellectual

  "In Quest of Democracy". Essay by Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991.

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• To be disciplined does not mean being silent, abstaining, or doing only what one thinks one may undertake without risk; it is not the art of eluding responsibility; it means acting in compliance with orders received, and therefore finding in one's own mind, by effort and reflection, the possibility to carry out such orders. It also means finding in one's own will the energy to face the risks involved in execution.

  Ferdinand Foch

  Art, Mean, Responsibility

  "Precepts and Judgments". Book by Ferdinand Foch, 1919.

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• There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of "little guy" or "silent majority" rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Personality, Guy, Majority

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.271, Atlantic Books Ltd

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