Quotes about silence

„Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.“

—  Elisabeth Kübler-Ross American psychiatrist 1926 - 2004

„Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from.“

—  Elisabeth Kübler-Ross American psychiatrist 1926 - 2004

As quoted in " Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Messenger of Love https://books.google.com/books?id=3esDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=%22Yoga+Journal%22+Kronisch&source=bl&ots=B895e3lzeI&sig=7V4uALc6CTiPrF02-cV8AAzsgbw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM1enasPLSAhWs6oMKHbpyAbQQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=%22Elisabeth%20Kubler-Ross%22&f=false" by Lennie Kronisch in Yoga Journal, Issue 11, November-December 1976, pp. 18-20
Context: Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from. There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.

„Silence is like a flame, you see?“

—  Marcel Marceau French mime and actor 1923 - 2007

Interview Charlie Rose (27 September 2000)

„The cruelest lies are often told in silence.“

—  Robert Louis Stevenson Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer 1850 - 1894

Truth of Intercourse.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Context: The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?

„Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.“

—  Muhammad Ali African American boxer, philanthropist and activist 1942 - 2016

„The music is not in the notes,
but in the silence between.“

—  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Austrian Romantic composer 1756 - 1791

„Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything.“

—  Benjamin Hoff, book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

„I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.“

—  Arthur Rimbaud French Decadent and Symbolist poet 1854 - 1891

Source: A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

„I know that when the world
surrenders, pallid, to repose,
the murmur of a tranquil stream
through the deep silence flows.“

—  José Martí Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader 1853 - 1895

I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 275
Simple Verses (1891)

„Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places.“

—  Michael Parenti American academic 1933

2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, The Invisible Bloodbaths, p. 132
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

„Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.“

—  Nora Roberts American romance writer 1950

„Silence gives consent.“

—  Oliver Goldsmith Irish physician and writer 1728 - 1774

Act II.
The Good-Natured Man (1768)

„The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.“

—  August Spies American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor 1855 - 1887

Cited in: Kenneth G. Alfers (1993) America's second century: readings in United States history since 1877. p. 43

„Sometimes there aren't words. The silence between us is flung wide as an ocean. But I manage to reach across it, to wrap my arms around him.“

—  Jodi Picoult Author 1966

„The company, then, were feasting in silence, as though some one in authority had commanded them to do so, when Philip the buffoon knocked at the door and told the porter to announce who he was and that he desired to be admitted; he added that with regard to food he had come all prepared, in all varieties—to dine on some other person's,—and that his servant was in great distress with the load he carried of—nothing, and with having an empty stomach. Hearing this, Callias said, “Well, gentlemen, we cannot decently begrudge him at the least the shelter of our roof; so let him come in.” With the words he cast a glance at Autolycus, obviously trying to make out what he had thought of the pleasantry. But Philip, standing at the threshold of the men's hall where the banquet was served, announced: “You all know that I am a jester; and so I have come here with a will, thinking it more of a joke to come to your dinner uninvited than to come by invitation.”“

—  Xenophon, Symposium

“Well, then,” said Callias, “take a place; for the guests, though well fed, as you observe, on seriousness, are perhaps rather ill supplied with laughter.”
Symposium, 1.11-13

„We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.“

—  Ram Dass American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now 1931 - 2019

„We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.“

—  Stanisław Lem, book Solaris

Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
Solaris (1961)

„When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.“

—  Wisława Szymborska Polish writer 1923 - 2012

Source: Poems New and Collected

„What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.“

—  Claude Monet French impressionist painter 1840 - 1926