Quotes about silence
page 6

“There was a silence. Then Paul looked at Alex.
'She knows Chesterton.'
'She lives,' said Alex.”

Regina Doman (1970) American writer

Source: Waking Rose

“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…”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Music, Time

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

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

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

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe

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

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

Powerful

“Silence is a true friend who never betrays.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Back To Work

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

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings book The Yearling

Source: The Yearling

Death

“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.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Feeling

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

Darshan Singh (1932)

Pain, Cry

“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.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Ch. 1
Context: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. 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.

Housing

“Silence is so accurate.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

“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!”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Ruins of Gorlan

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

Maud Hart Lovelace book Betsy in Spite of Herself

Source: Betsy in Spite of Herself

“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.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Secret, Feeling, Waiting

“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.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Past, Future

“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.”

Marie Howe (1950) American writer

“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.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

People, Shoe, Nature, Clothes

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

Elizabeth Kostova (1964) American writer

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

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

Sleep, Evil, Heart

“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.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Wilderness Letter http://wilderness.org/bios/former-council-members/wallace-stegner (1960) <br class="br">Source: The Sound of Mountain Water

People, Health, Books, World

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

Robertson Davies book The Rebel Angels

Source: The Rebel Angels

“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.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty (1859), Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion

Personality

“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.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

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

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Silence and Tact
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

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

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“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”

Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian

Source: 2000s, 2001, Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
Context: Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. 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. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

Stupidity, Time

“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.”

Nick Flynn (1960) American writer

Fear, Feeling

“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.”

Tom Perrotta book The Leftovers

Source: The Leftovers

Life, People

“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.)”

Elizabeth Peters The Deeds of the Disturber

Source: The Deeds of the Disturber

Cats

“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.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Literature

“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.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Secret, Dead

“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.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

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

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

“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.”

Tadeusz Borowski book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Source: This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Truth, Beauty

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

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Source: Lighthousekeeping

Parting

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

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Hurt

“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?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“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.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Personality

“Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

“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.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Food, Sleep

“Silence is the perfect expression of scorn.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Pt. V http://books.google.com/books?id=sUKiG0ghhb4C&q=%22Silence+is+the+most+perfect+expression+of+scorn%22&pg=PA255#v=onepage <br class="br">1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Perfection

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

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Life

“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Betrayal, Time

“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.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Inès reiterating to Garcin that they cannot ignore one another, Act 1, sc. 5
No Exit (1944)
Source: No Exit and Three Other Plays

Feeling, Forgetting

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

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Solitude

“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.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3

People, Time

“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.”

Thomas Merton book No Man Is an Island

Source: No Man Is an Island

Music

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

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

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

Joel Salatin (1957) American environmentalist

Source: Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front

Fear, Faith, Way, Freedom

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

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Solitude

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

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

"Silence"
The Poems of Marianne Moore (2003)

Feeling

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

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

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

Amy Goodman (1957) American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author

“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.”

Lois Lowry (1937) American writer

Peace, Feeling, Speed

“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?”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

Love, People, Sense

“Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

“SILENCE you miserable cretins!”

Nikolas Schreck American musician and writer

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

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Secret, Music, Night

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

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Attributed to Adams in: AB bookman's weekly: for the specialist book world. (1985) Vol 76, Nr. 19-27; p. 3326

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

Yasmina Khadra (1955) Algerian writer

Source: The Attack

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

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

Hell, Time

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

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

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

Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

Source: Lonesome Dove

Star

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

Khaled Hosseini (1965) novelist

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

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

Love, Heart

“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.”

John Ciardi (1916–1986) American poet, professor, translator

Source: This Strangest Everything

Smile

“I am interested in silences”

Anne Enright (1962) Irish writer

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

James Herriot (1916–1995) veterinary surgeon and writer

Peace

“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?”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Half of a Yellow Sun

Source: Half of a Yellow Sun

Love, Feeling, Time

“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.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

World, Mountain

“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."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution", sermon at the National Cathedral, 31 March 1968, published in A Testament of Hope (1986)
1960s
Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

People, Time, Waiting, Indifference

“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.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Books, Time

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

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“Silence is the virtue of a fool.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book VI, xxxi
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Fools

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

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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

Paul Bowles (1910–1999) American composer, writer, translator

Way, Time

“I have never heard a more eloquent silence.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Variant: He says a million things without saying a word. I have never heard a more eloquent
silence.
Source: Speak

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

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

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.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Heart, Flying

“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.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones, wife of the artist Edward Burne-Jones (1875)

Love, World, Light

“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.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“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.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Thinking, Indifference

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

Erich Segal book Love Story

Source: Love Story

Thinking

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

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

“Sun, silence, and happiness.”

Nancy Mitford book The Pursuit of Love

Source: The Pursuit of Love

Sun, 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.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
And 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. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
Context: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we're always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. 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. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.

Betrayal, Time, Night