Quotes about silence
page 7

“For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Cats

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”

David Markson book Wittgenstein's Mistress

Source: Wittgenstein's Mistress

“It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Way, Feeling, Personality

“Awareness
There is a dark place.
A place where I have no eyes, no mouth. No words.
I can't cry out because I have no breath. The silence is so deep I want to die.
But I can't.
The darkness and silence go on forever.
It is not a dream.
I don't dream.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Dreams, Cry

“Silence fell between them, as tangible as the dark tree shadows that fell across their laps and that now seemed to rest upon them as heavily as though they possessed a measurable weight of their own.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Tree

“Everything has two endings-
a horse, a piece of string, a phone call.

Before a life, air.
And after.

As silence is not silence, but a limit of hearing.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

Source: Come, Thief: Poems

Life, Horse

“[S]he leans into this guy and rocks her head like I’m making this music for her, when if I could, I would take it all away and give her as much silence as she’s given me pain.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Pain, Music, Guy

“Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Source: La Nouvelle Vague

“Just because you didn't speak the facts out loud didn't erase their existence. Silence was just a quieter way to lie.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Lie, Way

“WHAT?! YOU FFFFFFFfffffff…" [Silence. ] "…I just lost. I just lost…!”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

Hearthstone series, Too Many Traps 2 (April 25, 2014)

“Tombed in the solid night of starless space;
From nearest living orb so far removed,
That light, of all material things most swift,
Myriads on myriads of earth's years must speed,
Ere the mere outskirts of that Stygian gloom,
If ever, it might reach,-at rest eterne,
Lies the cold wreck of an extinguished sun.
Prime glory once of all heaven's radiant host;
Body, for soul of purest light most fit-
'Tween its first darkening, and eclipse complete,
Streamed years which might eternity appear;
While into ether, like the particles,
Invisible, which are the breath of flowers,
The mighty bulk its softer elements
Still ever was exhaling. As when flesh
And sinew of earth's monster Mastodon,
By the slow wasting of the elements,
All are dissolved, and hard, enduring bones
Alone remain,- even so, of this immense,-
When, by the ocean waves of centuries,
Millions succeeding millions, worn away,-
The adamantine skeleton alone,
In darkness, silence, utter solitude,
A ruin for eternity, was left.”

Edwin Atherstone (1788–1872) British writer

Israel in Egypt, Book the First (1861)

Soul, Flowers, Solitude, Light

“And I shall get to know you
In these lifetimes
In awe and wonder
On down through the years
The nighttime angel spreads her wings around me
I feel the silence
And my doubts are cleared.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Lifetimes
Song lyrics, Wavelength (1978)

Angels, Feeling

“Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

The Listeners (1912)

Housing

“He gave me no sign. I was never the sort to receive portents, or to delude myself that I had. Silence was always my portion, in return for my prayers.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 295

“Here it is night: I stay at the Summit Temple.
Here I can touch the stars with my hand.
I dare not speak aloud in the silence
For fear of disturbing the dwellers of Heaven.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"The Summit Temple" (夜宿山寺), in The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1947), p. 173

Fear, Star, Night

“The phone rang.
It was a thing that had been sitting here, black and quiet like a holstered gun, unlisted, unknown to anybody, used only for local outgoing calls, and when it was triggered it had the soft, muted sound of a silenced automatic. The first ring was a warning sound. The second time would be death calling.”

Mickey Spillane book Black Alley

Black Alley (1996)

Death, Time

“We've been conditioned to avoid silence at all costs lest we be confronted with our own inner chaos.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

“Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"The Habit of Perfection", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Music, Singing

“Short story writers simply do what human beings have always done. They write stories because they have to; because they cannot rest until they have tried as hard as they can to write the stories. They cannot rest because they are human, and all of us need to speak into the silence of mortality, to interrupt and ever so briefly stop that quiet flow, and with stories try to understand at least some of it.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Into the Silence.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Understanding

“Among the friends and patrons of the society at York who paid kind and hospitable attention to those whom the love of science had brought to the meeting, the clergy must not be passed over in silence. They had been the zealous promoters of the meeting; had done much towards facilitating the preliminary arrangements; and exerted themselves by their influence and example to secure to the association that respect and general attention which it deserved, and which at York it amply received. To the church, therefore, the British Association is deeply indebted; and convinced, as I am, that true religion and true science ever lead to the same great end, manifesting and exalting the glory and goodness of the great object of our common worship, I trust that the firmer the association is established, and the more influential it becomes, the more willing and the more efficient an ally it will prove in the cause of religion. While in former times science was said to lead to infidelity, because then it was less profoundly studied, or with less zeal for truth, it is one of the happy characters of the science of this day that it renders men more devout; and it is a pleasing evidence that such is the received opinion, when discerning and educated men — the friends and teachers of religion — of all ranks, step forward not only to patronize science, but to enlist themselves among its cultivators, and to distinguish those who have most successfully advanced it.”

James Finlay Weir Johnston (1796–1855) Scottish agricultural chemist

Report of the First Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at York in September 1831. By James F. W. Johnston, A. M. &c. &c. As found in David Brewster's The Edinburgh Journal Of Science. Vol. 8 https://archive.org/stream/edinburghjourna09brewgoog#page/n29/mode/2up, p. 29.

Love, Men, Truth, Education

“Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare;
To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Drink, Madness, Despair

“Due to Zionist tactics of silencing any Jewish criticisms within US Jewish organizations, and their threats to their opponents at the convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in June 1943, Reform Rabbi Louis Wolsey, a fierce anti-Zionist, feared that the prominent American Zionist Rabbi Stephen Wise had 'revealed by his tyranny over the non-conformist what the Zionists would do to the Arabs.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle"

Fear

“There was a fifteen-second patch of silence, then Craig said, 'Isn't it weird that Hotmail accounts still exist?' 'It really is,' said Bev.”

Douglas Coupland book Generation A

Source: Generation A (2009), p. 222

“Finally Jones came in with a blinding fastball, the way Sad Sam used to throw ’em, and Clemente unloaded. The wind was blowing in from left field that day, and blowing hard. This was 1960, remember, before the fences had been moved in, and nobody was hitting home runs at Candlestick. Not Mays, not Cepeda, not anybody. Clemente’s bat hit the ball, and the result absolutely clubbed the crowd into awed silence for a long moment. Right into that wet whipping wind the ball carried. Right on through, hit 120 feet high in a long soaring majestic parabola that came down finally over 450 feet away. There is just no way of telling how far Clemente’s home run blast would have traveled had it not been for that wind. Suffice it to say partisan Giant fans suddenly broke their shell-shocked silence and let loose a gagantic roar. For two innings the stadium buzzed. For days the Giants talked about it. Even today if you slip up behind a Giant pitcher and suddenly whisper in his ear: ‘Remember the home run Clemente hit?’ he’s likely to jump as high as if he’d been caught putting spit on baseballs.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Roberto Clemente: Arriba!" in Baseball Stars of 1962 (March 1962), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 115
Sports-related

Sadness, Way, Travel, Home

“Silence is a learned practice that requires far more than just not talking. Not talking is not silence; it's just not talking.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Entering the Castle : An Inner Path to God and Your Soul (2007), p. 39 (Based on the 'Interior Castle' by Teresa of Ávila)

Learning

“When conspiracies have governmental powers, they can usually cover up their guilt at the time and they often destroy evidence so thoroughly that later generations are left with a puzzle they can solve only partially or tentatively. We now know only that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was arranged by a conspiracy for the dual purpose of eliminating a political figure who was no longer useful and of exciting fresh animosity against the Southerners who had been conquered, and whose country had been destroyed, in the unconscionable war of aggression of which he had been the ostensible leader; but, aside from a few hirelings, the only person whom we can positively identify as a member of the conspiracy is Stanton, who was the Secretary of War in Lincoln’s cabinet, arranged many of the practical details, and was able, after the event, to silence key witnesses, although we can only guess what it was they knew that made it necessary to have them judicially murdered. And Stanton seems to have been only a local manager for principals whose identity we can only surmise.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Revised Historiography", Liberty Bell magazine (April 1980)
1970s, 1980s

War, Time, Personality, Country

“Once we realize that the principles of our actions have no other support than our blind choice, we really do not believe in them anymore… In order to live, we have to silence the easily silenced voice of reason, which tells us that our principles are in themselves as good or as bad an any other principles. The more we cultivate reason, the more we cultivate nihilism…”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 6

Support

“To tell the absolute truth, I’ve always been slightly embarrassed by Walter’s company. Whenever I’m with him, I feel the stretch of the old tightrope, the necessity of living up to the friendship of friendships, of cultivating an intimacy beyond words. The fact is that we have little to say to each other. There is only this thick sympathetic silence between us. We are comrades, true, but somewhat embarrassed comrades. It is probably my fault. For years now I have had no friends. I spend my entire time working, making money, going to movies and seeking the company of women.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer (1961)

Women, Money, Friendship, Truth

“Job learned the wisdom of silence before God, but it appears many Christians have abandoned this value in our wordy world.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Wisdom, God, World, Learning

“"Marcus! I thought you must have been developing other interests, but I never expected to find you with your arms locked round a fish —"
Then the lull sank to a silence.”

Lindsey Davis book Venus in Copper

Venus in Copper

Fish

“Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (2006)

God, World, Sense, Parting

“Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.”

Philip Larkin book The Less Deceived

Next, Please
The Less Deceived (1955)

Water

“And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or 'appreciate.' For the function of the anthologist includes criticizing in silence.”

Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944) British writer and literary critic

Oxford Book of English Verse, Introduction

Books, Time

“Out of purity and silence come words of power.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago
Variant: Out of purity and silence come words of power.

“Peace is not the silence of cemeteries, but the song of social justice.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Rights expert urges the UN General Assembly to adopt a more decisive role in peace-making (For International Day of Peace, Saturday 21 September 2013) http://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/2013/09/26/rights-expert-urges-the-un-general-assembly-to-adopt-a-more-decisive-role-in-peace-making-for-international-day-of-peace-saturday-21-september-2013/. 2013, 2013 - International Peace Day

Peace, Justice

“Having finished his argument Stephen walked on in silence. He felt Cranly's hostility and he accused himself of having cheapened the eternal images of beauty. For the first time, too, he felt slightly awkward in his friend's company and to restore a mood of flippant familiarity he glanced up at the clock of the Ballast Office and smiled:”

James Joyce book Stephen Hero

It has not epiphanised yet, he said.
Stephen Hero (1944)

Hostility, Smile, Beauty, Mood

“Every now and then, when you're onstage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live.”

Shelley Winters (1920–2006) actress

Theatre Arts magazine, June 1956 http://books.google.com/books?id=9ENNAAAAYAAJ

“The leafless orchard
Is alone day and night
With his pure and sad silence.”

Mehdi Akhavan-Sales (1928–1990) Iranian poet

Poem The Leafless Garden; Quoted in website devoted to the poet, 2013 http://www.mehdiakhavansales.com/the-leafless-garden/

Sadness, Night

“Reconquer the streets, the markets – the public spaces, with the same message of opposition: We are devastated, but we will not give up. With torches and roses, we deliver this message to the world: We do not let fear break us. And we do not let the fear of fear silence us.”

Jens Stoltenberg (1959) Norwegian politician, 13th Secretary-General of NATO, 27th Prime Minister of Norway

The City Hall Square Speech, July 25. 2011 ( Aftenposten http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article4185069.ece). 2010s

World, Fear

“I was not meant to be alone. I am not good at it. The years since Ruth's passing have ticked by with the kind of desparate silence known only to the elderly. It is a silence underscored by loneliness and the knowledge that the good years are already in the past, coupled with the complications of old age itself.
The body is not meant to survive nearly a century. I speak from experience when I say this…”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Ira Levinson, Chapter 28, p. 320-321
2009, The Longest Ride (2013)

Age, Knowledge, Past, Loneliness

“Like a fish in the wind, jumps right out of its knowledge, and lands on the sand. Like when the wind comes ruffling at last, to sailors adrift, trying to manage the broken springs of their muscles, and lever and lift their well rubbed oars, making tiny dents, in the ocean. Like when they're cutting ash poles in the hills, the treetops fall as soft as cloth. Like oak trees swerving out of the hills, and setting their faces to the wind, day after day being practically lifted away, they are lashed to the earth, and never let go, gripping on darkness. All day in a trance of war, men murder each other, but at dusk, silence, only the fingers of fire lifting their questions to the mainland. Is there anybody there, please help. Help. help. Until he's full, and of his own iron will walks on.”

Alice Oswald (1966) British poet

Men, War, Spring, Question

“There were no sounds of men, here; only the whisperings of the world of nature, which men often called silence.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 39 (pp. 562-563)

Men, World, Nature

“First silence. Then denial. Then support of the insupportable. Then vilification of the dissenters. The pattern is as old as time.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Torture and Conservatism" http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2006/07/torture_and_con.html, The Daily Dish (11 July 2006)

Support, Time

“The Sin Washer had died centuries ago, and His legacy seemed often to be in the accumulation of connections and power more than the distribution of emotional or spiritual ease. She kept that thought to herself. Wisdom came in many forms, and silence was often the most useful.”

Laura Anne Gilman book Flesh and Fire

Source: Flesh and Fire (2009), p. 96

Wisdom

“Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; — grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.”

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

Gettysburg Oration (1863)

God, Nature

“Now was it night, when in deepe rest enrol'd
Are waves and windes, and mute the world doth show
Weari'd the beasts, and those that bottome hold
Of billow'd sea, and of moyst streames that flow,
And who are lodged in cave, or pen'd in fold,
And painted flyers in oblivion low,
Under their secret horrours silenced,
Stilled their cares, and their harts suppelled.”

Richard Carew (antiquary) (1555–1620) English scholar

Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Hierusalem (1594), Canto II, stanza 96

Secret, World, Painting, Sea

“Silence is an answer in the eyes of the wise.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Unidentified Plays, Fragment 977
Variant translation: Silence is true wisdom's best reply. (See Discussion page for sourcing information)

“It is said in the Book of Poetry, "In silence is the offering presented, and the spirit approached to; there is not the slightest contention." Therefore the superior man does not use rewards, and the people are stimulated to virtue. He does not show anger, and the people are awed more than by hatchets and battle-axes.”

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

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

People, Books, Anger

“contempt loves the silence
it thrives in the dark
with fine winding tendrils
that strangle the heart
they say that promises
sweeten the blow
but I don't need them
no, I don't need them”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Ophelia (1998), My Skin

Love, Heart

“When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights.
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;—
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore”

Edward Lear (1812–1888) British artist, illustrator, author and poet

The Dong with the Luminous Nose http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ll/dln.html, st. 1 (1877).

Night

“When we remain silent and fail to act, when we know that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseam, when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of our institutions and our liberty, we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech in the U.S. Senate (2017)

“It was evening when we came to the river
With a low moon over the desert
that we had lost in the mountains, forgotten,
what with the cold and the sweating
and the ranges barring the sky.
And when we found it again,
In the dry hills down by the river,
half withered, we had
the hot winds against us. There were two palms by the landing;
The yuccas were flowering; there was
a light on the far shore, and tamarisks.
We waited a long time, in silence.
Then we heard the oars creaking
and afterwards, I remember,
the boatman called us.
We did not look back at the mountains.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

"Crossing" describing memories of New Mexico in Hound and Horn (June 1928)

Mountain, Flowers, Light, Time

“We hurry since everything hurries
And I shall never not return
Memories are all archaic horns
Silenced by the wind.”

Guillaume Apollinaire book Alcools

Passons passons puisque tout passe
Je me retournerai souvent
Les souvenirs sont cors de chasse
Dont meurt le bruit parmi le vent
"Cors de chasse" (Hunting Horns), line 9; translation from Donald Revell (trans.) Alcools (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1995) p. 159.
Alcools (1912)

Memory

“Q: What is silence? A: Silence is an austerity. You control your desire to talk. By talking, people try to impress others, which you can't do if you are in silence. In silence you have to develop tolerance. At first it is difficult to do because you separate yourself from others by not expressing yourself. But gradually the mind reduces that ego and an aspirant accepts the situation, which develops tolerance and reduces anger.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

165
Silence Speaks, from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass, 1977

People, Anger

“Let music make less terrible
The silence of the dead;
I care not, so my spirit last
Long after life has fled.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Source: The Venetian Bracelet (1829), Lines of Life

Life, Music, Dead

“When it comes to the FCC, the Bush administration helped lay the foundation. But now, that foundation is being turned on. And I fear an event. I fear a Reichstag moment. God forbid, another 9/11. Something that will turn this machine on, and power will be seized and voices will be silenced. God help us all.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Glenn Beck Exclusive: Warns of 'Reichstag Event'
2009-09-29
Newsmax
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/beck-obama-reichstag-fox/2009/12/12/id/341897
'We Are Fighting People Who Want Power Over Us'
2009-09-29
Newsmax
1546-5497
http://w3.newsmax.com/a/oct09/beck/interview.cfm
2000s, 2009

God, Fear, Help

“We have medicines to make women speak; we have none to make them keep silence.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Nous avons des remèdes pour faire parler les femmes; nous n'en avons pas pour les faire taire.
La Comédie de celui qui épousa une femme muette [The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife] (1912), Act II, sc. iv

Women

“(…) as long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace – immersed in the deep silence of reality.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Reality
Source: "I am That." P.37.

Life, Peace, Idea, Understanding

“So turn your ears, you musicians, to silence
Because they only come out when it's quiet,
Their tails brushing over your eyelids…
Oh, wake up, sleepers, and rise from the dead!”

Aaron Weiss

The Soviet.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Dead

“After centuries of relative silence and enforced acceptance, we adapted a technique of exposing the problem by direct and dramatic methods. We had confidence that when we awakened the nation to the immorality and evil of inequality, there would be an upsurge of conscience followed by remedial action. We knew that there were solutions and that the majority of the nation were ready for them. Yet we also knew that the existence of solutions would not automatically operate to alter conditions. We had to organize, not only arguments, but people in the millions for action. Finally we had to be prepared to accept all the consequences involved in dramatizing our grievances in the unique style we had devised.”

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

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

People, Confidence, Problem, Evil

“Sonia has achieved such terrifying power, a glance of her, a silence, just being there, is enough for her inner circle to act; she has subverted so much of the instruments of Indian democracy and she controls such huge amounts of unlisted money that sooner or later this 'karma' may come back to her under one form or the other.”

François Gautier (1959) French journalist

On Sonia Gandhi, quoted from "Why is Sonia Gandhi so scared of Narendra Modi?" http://www.dnaindia.com/india/analysis-why-is-sonia-gandhi-so-scared-of-narendra-modi-1539917, DNA India (6 May 2011)

Money, Democracy

“The Constitution of independent India adopted in January 1950 made things quite smooth for the Christian missions. They surged forward with renewed vigour. Nationalist resistance to what had been viewed as an imperialist incubus during the Struggle for Freedom from British rule, broke down when the very leaders who had frowned upon it started speaking in its favour. Voices which still remained ‘recalcitrant’ were sought to be silenced by being branded as those of ‘Hindu communalism’. Nehruvian Secularism had stolen a march under the smokescreen of Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhAva”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998)

Communication, Freedom

“My tears, O Ryno! are for the dead; my voice for those that have passed away. Tall thou art on the hill; fair among the sons of the vale. But thou shalt fall like Morar; the mourner shall sit on thy tomb. The hills shall know thee no more; thy bow shall lie in thy hall, unstrung!
Thou wert swift, O Morar! as a roe on the desert; terrible as a meteor of fire. Thy wrath was as the storm. Thy sword in battle, as lightning in the field. Thy voice was a stream after rain; like thunder on distant hills. Many fell by thy arm; they were consumed in the flames of thy wrath. But when thou didst return from war, how peaceful was thy brow! Thy face was like the sun after rain; like the moon in the silence of night; calm as the breast of the lake when the loud wind is laid.
Narrow is thy dwelling now! dark the place of thine abode! With three steps I compass thy grave, O thou who wast so great before. Four stones, with their heads of moss, are the only memorial of thee. A tree with scarce a leaf, long grass, which whistles in the wind, mark to the hunter's eye the grave of the mighty Morar.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The Songs of Selma"
The Poems of Ossian

War, Lie, Peace, Art

“Dear friends, on 9 October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends, too. They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. And my dreams are the same. Dear sisters and brothers, I am not against anyone. Neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I am here to speak for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists. I do not even hate the Talib who shot me.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

UN speech, June 2013

Life, Hate, Education, Fear

“Except for cases of pathological incapacity, one can and must communicate, and thereby contribute in a useful and easy way to the peace of others and oneself, because silence, the absence of signals, is itself a signal, but an ambiguous one, and ambiguity generates anxiety and suspicion. To say that it is impossible to communicate is false; one always can.”

Primo Levi book The Drowned and the Saved

The Drowned and the Saved (1986)

Peace, Way, Communication, Falseness

“A moment of silence please for those that never get the chance”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

Chance

“What difference does it make, whether we keep our silence because [they] force us or because we're afraid they might force us?”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

March 20, 1782
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Friendship

“The spiritual life must find its origin in silence.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Life

“Silence is the space that has yet to be resolved where the dynamics of thinking and deciding.”

Eugenio Cruz Vargas (1923–2014) Chilean poet and painter

Quote Source: From the earthly to the spatial, poems, 2011 Source: Biography of E. Cruz Vargas - Cultural Institute of Providencia http://es.scribd.com/doc/53503507/Eugenio-Cruz-Vargas Source: New Cultural Institute of Providencia http://www.portaldearte.cl/agenda/pintura/2008/eugenio_cruz.html Source: Land Scape Cruz Vargas http://www.angelfire.com/ma4/juratemacnoriute/ECV.html Source: Country Landscape of Cruz Vargas http://identidadquillecana.blogspot.com/ Source: El Mercurio of Santiago June 24, 2008 http://buscador.emol.com/multimedia/Eugenio+Cruz+Vargas Source: Art Portal of Instituto Cultural de Providencia http://www.portaldearte.cl/agenda/pintura/2008/eugenio_cruz.html

Thinking

“But your own vegetarianism, Mrs. Costello,” says President Garrard, pouring oil on troubled waters: “it comes out of moral conviction, does it not?”
“No, I don't think so,” says his mother. “It comes out of a desire to save my soul.”
Now there truly is a silence, broken only by the clink of plates as the waitresses set baked Alaskas before them.
“Well, I have a great respect for it,” says Garrard. “As a way of life.”
“I'm wearing leather shoes,” says his mother. “I'm carrying a leather purse. I wouldn't have overmuch respect if I were you.”
“Consistency,” murmurs Garrard. “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Surely one can draw a distinction between eating meat and wearing leather.”

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

“Degrees of obscenity,” she replies.
Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), pp. 43-44

Life, Shoe, Way, Soul

“Adrienne von Speyr has brought mysticism back from the clandestine existence into which, increasingly misunderstood, indeed scorned, it had been exiled and silenced by official theology and proclamation and has returned it to the center of salvation history.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr (1968)

History

“I had this very interesting experience when I was about 13. I went to Finland and it was dead in the middle of winter. It was freezing cold. There was so much snow and I went to Ainola, which is Sibelius' house. It was completely isolated -- just snow and forest, trees and the lake, completely beautiful but very quiet. And very serene. And I thought, well, this is where he was composing his stuff. And his great symphonies and the violin concerto, this is where it basically came from. I also got this little handbook about Ainola and there's a part that says that Sibelius wouldn't allow running water in his house because it disturbed him and his thought processes. So his daughters had to go out to the well which was half a mile away and then bring back water. So I thought, "Wow!" This person was really that much into control and silence. So you go and look at the concerto after that and the way it starts in the beginning: very shimmery. Very beautiful. But in a way it is isolated, and you feel kind of lonely when you're playing that. And gradually of course it builds up into this great big climax when every single orchestra-like instrument known to mankind is clashing and you're trying to break out there and you're trying to play your heart out. But really it did help me realize what he is like.”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

PBS.org 1998 http://www.pbs.org/lflc/backstage/march3/chang.htm

Beauty, Way, Feeling, Tree

“The tomato hit Brother Leon on his left cheek, a ripe tomato that exploded in juicy fury, splattering his shirt and his hair and smearing his face with what looked like blood. Nobody said anything. Nobody moved. Nobody cheered or booed. Everybody sat there in a profound silence as Brother Leon, mouth agape, wiped the tomato from his face, still silent as he stalked from the stage, leaving an assembly hall full of students who sat stunned, silent for a few minutes, then quietly filed out of the hall. Broher Leon never learned the culprit's name. He, in fact, never made an effort to do so. Nobody else ever mentioned the incident. But Henry Malloran was elected president of the senior class at the next day's election and nobody ran against him.”

Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War

Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 273

Effort, Learning

“The fact is, and the thing that is so appalling to me, is that the President, when this whole idea was suggested to him, didn't in righteous indignation rise up and say "get out of here. You are in the office of the President of the United States. How can you talk about blackmail and bribery and keeping witnesses silent? This is the Presidency of the United States!", and throw them out of his office, and pick up the phone and call the Department of Justice and tell them "there is obstruction of justice going on, someone is trying to buy the silence of a witness."But my President didn't do that. He sat there, and he worked and worked to try to cover this thing up so it wouldn't come to light.”

Lawrence Hogan (1928–2017) Maryland politician

Opening statement of Hon. Lawrence J. Hogan in the Debate on Articles of Impeachment, Committee on the Judiciary, July 24, 1974.
Hearings of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-Third Congress, CIS-NO: 74-H521-56, p. 65.

Justice, Idea, Light

“And silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

To an Insect; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Nun 2: (Very quietly) Sir, be grateful for the music. Most of us die in silence.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Baby of Mâcon

Music

“I didn't know what to think, but what I felt was magnetic and so big it ached like the moon had entered my chest and filled it up. The only thing I could compare it to was the feeling I got one time when I walked from the peach stand and saw the sun spreading across the late afternoon, setting the top of the orchard on fire while darkness collected underneath. Silence had hovered over my head, beauty multiplying in the air, the trees so transparent I felt like I could see through to something pure inside them. My chest ached then, too, this very same way.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

Beauty, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“If the whiteness they pursue is cool and haughty and blank,
history is uncool, reaches out gawkily for affinities, asserts itself boldly,
threatens to mark, to break through and stain the primed white canvas
that is their life.
For, having primed it, they do not know where to start,
how to make a mark. They are alone in the world, a small new
island of whiteness. Or so they think; they do not know, or perhaps
they do not want to know, that the neighbourhood is full of people
like them. Thus they are steeped in its silence.”

Zoë Wicomb (1948) South African author resident in Scotland

Playing in the Light (2006)

Life, People, World, History

“You see a Party system that crushes down anybody who [has] different opinions, who has different ideas in their mind. Simply to have different opinions can cost someone their life. They can be put in jail, they can be silenced, and they can [disappear]. And the other people would take it, not giving support.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei, interview by Christiane Amanpour, 2010

Life, People, Idea, Support

“All I know is the dark, the night underground. And that’s all there really is. That’s all there is to know, in the end. The silence, and the dark. You know everything, wizard. But I know one thing — the one true thing!”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Tombs of Atuan (1971), Chapter 7, "The Great Treasure" (Arha)

Night

“What's to gain by silence?”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Cannoc, in Gifts (2004)

“O'er the fields of space together following her flying traces,
In a radiant tumult thronging, suns and stars and myriad races
Mount the spirit spires of beauty, reaching onward to the day
When the Shepherd of the Ages draws his misty hordes away
Through the glimmering deeps to silence, and within the awful fold
Life and joy and love forever vanish as a tale is told,
Lost within the mother's being. So the vision flamed and fled,
And before the glory fallen every other dream lay dead.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Love, Life, Age, Beauty

“A lot of people tell me this, too: "Don't worry about it. It's God's will. Y'know, you weren't meant to be together. God's will." God's will? Really, God got involved in this? Really? Twenty years with somebody, twenty years of my life pretty much gone? All the money I made, the career I chose, pretty much torn to pieces? Two little kids' lives shattered? Really, God? Is that how you work? This brutal, disemboweling nightmare…is you? 'Cause if that's the case, then THERE IS NO GOD! (silence): And God said unto me: "Christopher…I did this so you could meet a 29-year-old, 5'11" Diesel jeans model who has two college degrees and already paid for her own boob job."”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

[a light shines on him and he drops to his knees, imitating a heavenly chorus] How shall I serve thee, Lord?
Love is Evol (2009)

Life, Money, God, People

“And silence … is loud! And I'd be straining real hard to hear what those two boys were saying. And finally, just when they figured I had my ear right against the window, one of those ol' boys would turn to the other and say "Did you know that Jesus died for your sins?" And the other one would say "Why no, tell me about it!"”

Mike Warnke (1946) Evangelical Christian minister

Alive (album) (1975)

Boy

“I do not believe that there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing, and stretching one's arms again transcendental experiences became possible.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

in The Romantics were prompted, essay by Mark Rothko, 1947/48; as quoted in Possibilities, vol 1, no. 1, winter 1947-48, Kate Rothko Prizel and Christophor Rothko.
1940's

Question, Solitude

“True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.”

F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) British philosopher

No. 10.
Aphorisms (1930)

“Some credible scholars say that making mass murderers famous motivates other mass murderers. (One might even argue that this article is part of the problem). Elliot Rodger sent his lengthy diatribe to the media before he went on his killing spree -- correctly predicting that his actions would propel his ideas (such as they were) into the marketplace of ideas on a digital billboard larger than he could ever have enjoyed had he not amplified them with his psychotic rampage. Accordingly, should we not silence him? Wipe his words from the Internet forever? Let him be forgotten?”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

Motivation, Idea, Problem, Parting

“Pythagoras said, that it was requisite either to be silent, or to say something better than silence.”

Stobaeus Ancient Greek anthologist

36
Pythagorean Ethical Sentences

“You’ll know what to say when the time comes. That’s the art, eh? What to say, and when to say it. And the rest is silence.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“The Bones of the Earth” (p. 139)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Art, Time

“In antiquity, life was nothing but silence. Noise was really not born before the 19th century, with the advent of machinery. Today noise reigns supreme over human sensibility.”

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) Electronic music pioneer and Futurist painter

Source: 1910's, The Art of Noise', 1913, p. 4

Life

“I understand that there's a large party of Scottish people here tonight…[Silence]I'll kill that researcher!”

Harry Hill (1964) English comedian, doctor

"Hooves" Live

People, Understanding

“Speech is the small change of Silence.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Source: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4412.txt (1859), Ch. 34.

Change

“Every week I watch Stuart Hall on It's A Knock-Out and realise with renewed despair that the most foolish thing I ever did was to turn in my double-0 licence and hand back that Walther PPK with the short silencer.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Eddie Waring Communicates'
Essays and reviews, Visions Before Midnight (1977)

Despair

“Abuse of any one generally shows that he has marked traits of character. The stupid and indifferent are passed by in silence.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 2

Stupidity, Indifference

“I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.”

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia

Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 37 from Frederick to Voltaire (June 1738)

People, Thinking

“There's a silence in this house today. There's a silence all over Northern Ireland today. There's grieving and there is despair. But behind the despair, there is being born a unity that we haven't seen before… I would like to commend publicly here today the priest of Antrim, the Roman Catholic priest. He made one of the greatest speeches I've ever heard from any of the cloth and he really said in Down to everyone that he did not want in his parish anybody like these men who did this task. And those of us who know Northern Ireland know that it takes some show of strength in a place like Antrim to say those words… We're coming up to St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick preached the gospel of Jesus Christ in Ireland. And I was just thinking today, the only thing these murderers have done: they have desecrated the shamrock by trying to pour the blood of their innocent victims upon it.”

Ian Paisley (1926–2014) Politician and former church minister

Speaking in the House of Commons after the shooting dead of two unarmed British soldiers outside Massereene Barracks in March 2009.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVnQwR-HtCo

Men, Thinking, Christ, Housing