„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
Quotes about silence
A collection of quotes on the topic of silence.
Related topicsTotal 1480 quotes silence, filter:
„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), Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
„What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.“
— Claude Monet French impressionist painter 1840 - 1926
„Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature. It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God.“
— Herman Melville, book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852), Bk. XIV, ch. 1
A paraphrase of the last portion of this has sometimes been cited as a quotation of Melville: God's one and only voice is silence.
„God is the silence of the universe, and man is the cry that gives meaning to that silence.“
— José Saramago Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature 1922 - 2010
Deus é o silêncio do universo, e o homem o grito que dá um sentido a esse silêncio.
Lanzarote Notebooks (1990), quoted in The Notebook, entry for 9 October 2008.
„Silence is most powerful. Speech is always less powerful than silence.“
— Ramana Maharshi Indian religious leader 1879 - 1950
Abide as the Self
„Silence
is an ocean. Speech is a river.“
— Rumi Iranian poet 1207 - 1273
Context: Silence
is an ocean. Speech is a river.When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk
into the language-river. Listen to the ocean,
and bring your talky business to an end Traditional words are just babbling
in that presence, and babbling is a substitute
for sight.
"The Three Fish" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 196
Variant translations or adaptations:
Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
As quoted in Teachers of Wisdom (2010) by Igor Kononenko, p. 134
Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
As quoted in "Rumi’s wisdom" (2 October 2015) http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/10/02/character-of-the-week-rumi/, by Paulo Coelho
„Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.“
— Rumi Iranian poet 1207 - 1273
Context: Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence. Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
"A Community of the Spirit" in Ch. 1 : The Tavern, p. 2
„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
„In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.“
— Judy Garland actress, singer and vaudevillian from the United States 1922 - 1969
„If you search the scientific literature on evolution, and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines—the basis of life—developed, you find an eerie and complete silence. The complexity of life’s foundation has paralyzed science’s attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet-impenetrable barrier to Darwinism’s universal reach.“
— Michael J. Behe American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate 1952
Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), p. (1996).
„Go Placidly, Amid the noise and Haste & Remember what peace there may be in silence…“
— Max Ehrmann, Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life
„We’ve also been laughed at, argued with, booed, and threatened with hellfire—or gunfire. But Jarret’s kind of religion and Jarret himself are getting less and less popular these days. Both, it seems, are bad for business, bad for the U. S. Constitution, and bad for a large percentage of the population. They always have been, but now more and more people are willing to say so in public. The Crusaders have terrorized some people into silence, but they’ve just made others very angry.“
— Octavia E. Butler, book Parable of the Talents
Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 21 (p. 430)
„He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.“
— Elbert Hubbard American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul 1856 - 1915
„I come to make song, after the tears.
And even if a choir of men
sprayed my tongue with silence,
poetry will come, with liberating voice,
to make my song fall from the trees
and reach the most deeply buried abysses of those tears
that the child lent me when crying himself into life.Because my infant song
is stronger than man’s tears,
and it could even conquer me
robbing the need of tears from the sun and the wind.“
— Juan Antonio Villacañas Spanish poet, essayist and critic 1922 - 2001
"New Songs for After the Tears", from Revolt of a Newborn (1973)
„The murderer smiles palely in wine,
Death's horror grips the sick.
Excoriated and naked, the nun prays
Before the Savior's agony on the cross.
The mother sings quietly in sleep.
Peacefully the child looks into the night
With eyes that are completely truthful.
In the whorehouse laughter rings.
By candlelight down in the cellar hole
The dead one paints with white hand
A grinning silence on the wall.
The sleeper whispers still.“
— Georg Trakl austrian poet 1887 - 1914
"Romance in the Night"
