“It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.”
Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories
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Sarah Orne Jewett 21
American novelist, short story writer and poet 1849–1909Related quotes
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
Expression and Meaning, p. 31, Cambridge University Press (1979).
Varanasi 2nd Public Talk (22 November 1964)
1960s
Context: You know, in the case of most of us, the mind is noisy, everlastingly chattering to itself, soliloquizing or chattering about something, or trying to talk to itself, to convince itself of something; it is always moving, noisy. And from that noise, we act. Any action born of noise produces more noise, more confusion. But if you have observed and learnt what it means to communicate, the difficulty of communication, the non-verbalization of the mind — that is, that communicates and receives communication—, then, as life is a movement, you will, in your action, move on naturally, freely, easily, without any effort, to that state of communion. And in that state of communion, if you enquire more deeply, you will find that you are not only in communion with nature, with the world, with everything about you, but also in communion with yourself.
