Quotes about silence

page 6

“Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness…”

“My silences he mistook for a lack of wit rather than a lack of any need to speak.”

“Silence, maiden; thy tongue outruns thy discretion.”

“Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.”

“Silence is a true friend who never betrays.”

“Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer.”

“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

“I hear my silence talked of in every lane;
The suppression of a cry is itself a cry of pain.”

“Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

“Silence is so accurate.”

“I said, names aren't important," he repeated. There was a silence between them for some seconds, then the Ranger said: "Do you know what is important?"
Will shook his head.
"Supper is important!”

“The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.”

“I know how this feels: the tightening of the chest, the panic, the what-have-I-done-wait-I-was-kidding. Eating disorders linger so long undetected, eroding the body in silence, and then they strike. The secret is out. You're dying.”

“The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.”

“Every poem holds the unspeakable inside it. The unsayable… The thing that you can't really say because it's too complicated. It's too complex for us. Every poem has that silence deep in the center of it.”

“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”

“There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.”

“Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence.”

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. … We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

“Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.”

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

“I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.”

“Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.”

“Kerosene," he said, because the silence had lengthened, "is nothing but perfume to me.”

“Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence”

“Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it.”

“It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.”

“In the silence I heard Bastet, who had retreated under the bed, carrying on a mumbling, profane monologue. (If you ask how I knew it was profane, I presume you have never owned a cat.)”

“Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.”

“Secret to what?"
"Secret to shutting you up," he said. "I just have to beat you till you're half-dead, then give you chicken soup and"--he raised his hands--"blessed silence.”

“I gotta say"—Apollo broke the silence—"these kids did okay." He cleared his throat and began to recite: "—"

Um, yes, first class," Hermes interrupted, like he was anxious to avoid Apollo's poetry.”

“Silence isn't golden, it's deadly. It's a vacuum that fills up with ghosts.”

“There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it.”

“Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.”

“The silence is so deep it hurts our ears.”

“He has become a worm. That is what I am telling you."
"I don't suppose it would be possible," said Henry into the silence, "to, er, step on him?”

“Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence.”

“Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.”

“Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4.

1. Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.”

“Silence is the perfect expression of scorn.”

“Everything in life is speaking in spite of its apparent silence.”

“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

“Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts.”

“What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

“We come from a generation of people who need their TV or stereo playing all the time. These people so scared of silence. These soundaholics, these quietophobics.”

“Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.”

“… because silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound.”

“When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol.”

“It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again.”

“The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.”

“My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

“Go to where the silence is and say something.”

“He was free to enjoy the breathless glee that overwhelmed him: the speed, the clear cold air, the total silence, the feeling of balance and excitement and peace.”

“I don't want more sense!" I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. "Not if sense means I'll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that's worth holding on to?”

“Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.”

“SILENCE you miserable cretins!”

“And then more quiet, silence so deep it almost drowned out the roar of the night music that pounded away in my secret self.”

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”

“We're fine together, just like this: Our silence protects us from ourselves”

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their silence at times of crisis.”

“You know," Kirk said finally, breaking the silence. "I see it. He is pretty hot.”

“From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness.”

“Every woman needed a husband, even if he did silence the song in her.”

“There was a silence. Hannah's own heart was twisted with the force of her love for him. Her eyes were full.”

“I'm smiled out, talked out, quipped out, socialized so far from any being, I need the weight of mortal silences to get realized back into myself.”

“I am interested in silences”

“And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly”

“Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?”

“Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence.”

“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time."”

“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. is soon forgotten, butlasts forever.”

“Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.”

“Silence is the virtue of a fool.”

“She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.”

“There is a way to master silence
Control its curves, inhabit its dark corners
And listen to the hiss of time outside”

“I have never heard a more eloquent silence.”

“It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.”

“Cold and silence. Nothing quieter than snow. The sky screams to deliver it, a hundred banshees flying on the edge of
the blizzard. But once the snow covers the ground, it hushes as still as my heart.”

“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.”

“On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”

“A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.”

“There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.”

“Noise is relative to the silence preceding it. The more absolute the hush, the more shocking the thunderclap.”

“Sun, silence, and happiness.”

“The time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us today…

… some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.”

“I looked over at him. "Is that a proposal?"

There was total silence for a couple beats. "I'm not sure. It just popped out."

"Let me know when you're sure."

"Would you say yes?" Morelli asked.

"I'm not sure.”

“One word from you shall silence me forever.”

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”

“He'd kept this silence because his own secrets were darker, more hidden, and because he believed that his secrets had created hers.”

“There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always.
If the music dies down there is a silence.
Almost the same as the movement of music.
To know silence perfectly is to know music.”

“come back
believer in shade
believer in silence and elegance
believer in ferns
believer in patience
believer in the rain”

“There in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning.”

“All those layers of silence upon silence.”

“Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge.”

“The effort of explaining, even of expressing himself, had become, with the years, more and more terrifying to him. Whether from laziness or from inability to find the right words, he had developed almost a passion for silence.”

“There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”

“I knew that in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late again. I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome.”

“If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her.”

“Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.”