Silent Quotes - Page 19

• I'm weary of my lonely but
  And of its blasted tree,
  The very lake is like my lot,
  So silent constantly--
  I've liv'd amid the forest gloom
  Until I almost fear--
  When will the thrilling voices come
  My spirit thirsts to hear?

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Country, Lonely, Voice

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• How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality,--a place, a country, a local habitation! how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us! Here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beautified and canonized forever, with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places,--rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others,--where distress or death came once, and since then dwells forevermore.

  Washington Irving

  Summer, Country, Dark

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• A silent address is the genuine eloquence of sincerity.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Addresses, Sincerity, Genuine

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The works of Oliver Goldsmith. 1: Poetical works; Dramas; The vicar of Wakefield”, p.160

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• A well-bred youth neither speakes of himselfe, nor being spoken to is silent.

  George Herbert

  Youth, Wells

  George Herbert (1874). “The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose”, p.328

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• A great silence has descended on me for the last six months. I am as silent as an Arab in the desert, as dry, thirsty, and full of wonder and rumours which do not materialize into camels or travellers at all, but just vanish into the silent spaces from where they came. I expect this is a good thing though it is extremely irritating - the brink of a voice and never a voice.

  May Sarton

  Voice, Space, Silence

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• In the family of continents, Africa is the silent, the brooding sister, courted for centuries by knight-errant empires - rejecting them one by one and severally, because she is too sage and a little bored with the importunity of it all.

  Beryl Markham

  Knights, Bored, Littles

  Beryl Markham (1994). “The Illustrated West with the Night”, Stewart, Tabori, & Chang

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• It was the silent time before dawn, along the shores of what had been one of the most beautiful lakes in southern Africa.

  James A. Michener

  Beautiful, Lakes, Southern

  James A. Michener (2014). “The Covenant: A Novel”, p.27, Dial Press

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• Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
  Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
  That death smote silent when he smote again.

  Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Sweet, Rain, Autumn

  Algernon Charles Swinburne (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated)”, p.1311, Delphi Classics

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• [On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.

  Dorothy Parker

  Should Have, Missing, Way

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• It is but a small merit to observe silence, but it is a grave fault to speak of matters on which we should be silent.

  Ovid

  Silence, Matter, Faults

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• The more we learn about flowers, the less silent they are.

  Sharman Apt Russell

  Flower

  Sharman Apt Russell (2002). “Anatomy of a Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers”, p.10, Basic Books

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• I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered.

  Denis Diderot

  Silence, Important, Matter

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• O days remember'd well! remember'd all!
  The bitter sweet, the honey and the gall;
  Those garden rambles in the silent night,
  Those trees so shady, and that moon se bright,
  That thickset alley by the arbor clos'd,
  That woodbine seat where we at last repos'd;
  And then the hopes that came and then were gone,
  Quick as the clouds beneath the moon past on.

  George Crabbe

  Sweet, Moon, Night

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• The talkative listen to no one, for they are ever speaking. And the first evil that attends those who know not to be silent is that they hear nothing.

  Plutarch

  Talking, Evil, Firsts

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• Who waits until the wind shall silent keep Will never find the ready hour to sow.

  Helen Hunt Jackson

  Wind, Waiting, Hours

  Helen Hunt Jackson, “Chance”

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• If it requires great tact to speak to the purpose, it requires no less to know when to be silent.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Purpose, Speak, Tact

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• Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed,
  His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared.
  His mother stood apart. No other looked
  into her secret eyes. Nobody dared.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Mother, Stones, Beloved

  "Crucifixion". Poem by Anna Akhmatova, 1940-1943.

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• As women got little crumbs of power, men began to act paranoid - as if we'd disabled them utterly. Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?

  Erica Jong

  Men, Littles, Speak

  Erica Jong (2006). “Fear of Fifty”, p.13, Penguin

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• So the false spider, when her nets are spread, deep ambushed in her silent den does lie.

  John Dryden

  Lying, Doe, Spiders

  John Dryden, Paul Hammond, David Hopkins (2007). “Dryden: Selected Poems”, p.96, Pearson Education

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• The power generated of ten minds for good is superior to that of ten thousand minds acting on a lower motive. But it is a silent power. It moves in mysterious ways. It is noiseless. It makes no show of open opposition. It uses no methods of effort through tongue or arm or physical force.

  Prentice Mulford

  Moving, Effort, Mind

  Prentice Mulford (2012). “Your Forces And How To Use Them (Complete Annotated Edition)”, p.203, Jazzybee Verlag

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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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• We hear the rain fall, but not the snow. Bitter grief is loud, calm grief is silent.

  Berthold Auerbach

  Grief, Rain, Fall

  Berthold Auerbach (1896*). “On the Heights”

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• My great wish is to go on in a strict but silent performance of my duty; to avoid attracting notice, and to keep my name out of the newspapers.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Names, Wish, Goes On

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States”, p.442

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• I first had a version of this at a Japanese monastery during a silent retreat-don't ask, it's a long story.

  Gwyneth Paltrow

  Funny, Long, Dumb

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• I'm constantly reading and trying to enlighten myself to how the world works in its silent ways to make everything seem normal when it's actually incredibly discriminating.

  Jenny Hval

  Reading, Trying, World

  "Jenny Hval's Soft Dick Rock". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. June 15, 2015.

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