Quotes about silence
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“A bell was rung. All the passengers came on deck. Never shall I forget the scene we then witnessed. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The sky was overspread with thick dark clouds. It looked like a vast temple at night, as the fitful, lurid sun cast a yellowish tinge resembling the pale light of the tapers near a catafalque. The foaming waves opened like immense tombs that seemed avid to swallow their first victim. When all was ready a porthole was opened, and a plank painted black, six feet long and three broad, was suspended over the deep. The body of a child, wrapped in a winding sheet, was placed upon it, with a large stone attached to the feet. For a minute or two the captain read -- I do not know what prayer. Profound silence reigned. The father scarcely shed a tear. The mother seemed quite unmoved. At a word spoken by the captain, the plank was raised in the air, and the next instant the light corpse glided into the waters. I made the Sign of the Cross over it, but alas, I do not know whether the child was even baptized. The passengers withdrew, apparently untouched by the scene, and some even smiled. How impiety deadens the heart!”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)

Smile, Tear, Light, Water

“There shall always be much silence in a man's conduct. He shall speak only about a matter concerned with wisdom or matters that are necessary to keep his body alive.”

Maimónides (1138–1204) rabbi, physician, philosopher

Source: Hilkhot De'ot (Laws Concerning Character Traits), Chapter 2, Section 4, p. 32

Wisdom

“"Fools," said I, "you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

The Sound of Silence
Song lyrics, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964)

Fools

“The talk is in your world. In mine – there is eternal silence. My silence sings, my emptiness is full. I lack nothing. You cannot know my world until you are there.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Silence
Source: "I am That." P.80.

World, Singing

“I bound her to me in all soft ways,
I bound her to me in a net of days,
Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word.
How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you?
There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Way, Cry

“... the clock
Was placed where full the sun-beams fell;—what deep,
Simple morality spoke in those hands,
Going their way in silence, till a sound,
Solemn and sweet, made their appeal to Time,
And the hour spoke its only warning!”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Way, Time, Sun

“Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"
Auditorium monitors moved in, truncheons ready to club down anyone foolish enough to try jumping the lecture platform; and finally there was relative silence. And I heard scattered voices screaming from the back of the room, "Who? And I said, "Yes. Who!”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Recalling an address to science-fiction fans, in his Introduction to Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) by Terrance Dicks, p. vii

War, Star, Science, Time

“Plato in his 'Laws,' remarks that 'Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of the understanding.' This just opinion, if applied to mere sensualists, who disbelieve in God because his holiness is a restraint upon their infamous passions, has since been applied to the pure thinkers like Spinoza, to whom it is an insult and an outrage. Let us see how little such a remark is applicable to those who thoughtfully pause before adopting a creed which, however dictated by a feeling of piety, is far less reverential than thoughtful silence.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

Source: The Limits of Atheism: Or, Why Should Sceptics be Outlaws? 1874, p. 13

God, Disease, Law, Error

“It has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity,—Necessity will make him submit,—but to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God's-World in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good;—that his part in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Wisdom, God, World, Law

“It certainly looks like the days of the Confederate battle flag flying on the grounds of the state house in Columbia, South Carolina are numbered. This is in large part due to prominent South Carolina political leaders changing positions under pressure given the recent mass murder in the state. No one can deny that. The arguments concerning the display of that particular flag are neither more nor less valid than before. Nor will the flag’s removal silence white supremacists and Confederate heritage advocates, especially those who have freely associated with white supremacists.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2010s, Down It Comes: No What? (June 2015)

Change, Parting, Housing, Flying

“Like knowing hostages, the AFL-CIO and its unions march in tandem to endorse the Democratic presidential nominees early in the primary season. They have given up their capacity for negotiation, so frightened are they of the Republicans. Meanwhile, the rank-and-file workers suffer their dwindling status in silence.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Crashing the Party (2002)

Suffering, Season

“My arrangement of my shelves may earn me a reputation for untidiness among the unthinking, but I am indifferent to these. From natural laziness – if you like – from sheer inability to discover any congruity between one book and another – I will not classify. There they are – as they come – as they go – in serried shelves – all happy with the fortuity of things – there are my books from the lowest shelf – to reach which the seeker must go (as he ought) on bended knees – to "the dust and silence of the upper shelf," as Lord Macaulay put it – there they are – awaiting the touch of the discerning hand and the light of the critical eye.
The Bankrupt Bookseller by Will Y. Darling, Robert Grant & Son Ltd, Edinburgh, 1947, p. 28.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947)

Books, Nature, Light, Indifference

“This is the stupidest place I have ever visited,' she said. 'I shall never come here again.' The tall man looked at her in silence and nodded. 'Yes, you will,' he said. 'You won't be able to stay away now that you have come.”

Margaret Hughes (1645–1719) British actress

All On A Summer's Day (1953).

“Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the Eternal; that which was before the beginning, and that which triumphs over the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the stillness, the silence—the infinite and final Night of space.”

H. G. Wells book The First Men in the Moon

Source: The First Men in the Moon (1901), Ch. 19: Mr. Bedford Alone

Life, Star, Light, Night

“To maintain immaculate speech, often times silence is required.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

"Where Epics Fail: Aphorisms on Art, Morality & Spirit" (2018)

Time

“There are many justifications of silence; there can be none of insincerity.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

“To which Silence of course made no reply, letting him hear what he had said and feel its foolishness thoroughly.”

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

“The Bones of the Earth” (p. 134)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Feeling

“To the degree that a man possesses a vivid ideal of the good life, submerges himself in the sea of human misery and endeavors to alleviate suffering, kindles imagination in hours of silence and by visions of beauty, and follows the noblest personality into the presence of a loving, suffering Father—to the extent that he lives meaningfully, he will be convinced of sin and cry aloud for deliverance.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

"Penitence and Social Progress" World Tomorrow 15 (May, 1932)

Love, Life, Beauty, Imagination

“When we never see who we are, never hear what we think about things, what we are doing as a group or what we are doing individually, then it is as if we are never there in the first place. Silence = Nonexistence.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, INVISIBILITY

Thinking

“Not one of us would dare to break
The silence
And, oh how we have longed
For something that would
Make us feel so…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Feeling

“You are not traditionally beautiful; and you know it. We women do. But what most people mean by beauty is really a kind of aesthetic acceptability, not so much character as a lack of it, a set of features and lineaments that hide their history, that suggest history itself does not exist. But the template by which we recognize the features and forms in the human body that cause the heart to halt, threatening to spill us over into the silence of death—that is drawn on another part of the soul entirely…But all sing, chant, hymn the history of the body, if only because we all know how people regard bodies that deviate from the lauded and totally abnormal norm named beauty. Most of us would rather not recognize such desires in ourselves and thus avoid all contemplation of what the possession of such features means about the lives, the bodies, the histories of others, preferring instead to go on merely accepting the acceptable. But that is not who I am.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 5, “Of Matrons, Mornings, Motives, and Machinations” (p. 103; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Death, Women, People, Beauty

“I hung Baziote's [painting] show with him at Peggy's in 1944. After it was up and we had stood in silence looking at it for a while, I noticed he had turned white... Suddenly he [Baziotes] looked at me and said: 'You're the one I trust; if you tell me the show is no good, I'll take it right down and cancel it.'.... you see, at the opposite side of the coin of the abstract expressionist's ambition and of out not giving a damn, was also not knowing whether our pictures were even pictures, let alone whether they were any good…”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

William Baziotes – paintings and drawings, curated by Michael Preble, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2004, p. 181
after 1970

Painting

“That in which consciousness happens, the universal consciousness or mind, we call the ether of consciousness. All the objects of consciousness form the universe. What is beyond both, supporting both, is the supreme state, a state of utter stillness and silence. Whoever goes there, disappears. It is unreachable by words, or mind. You may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless, effortless and spontaneous state, beyond being and not being.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Reality
Source: "I am That." P.35-6.

God, Support, Reality, Universe

“Silence is the sovereign contempt.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic

Le silence seul est le souverain mépris.
Pensées et maximes (Paris: B. Grasset, 1954) p. 271; Nicholas Rescher Communicative Pragmatism and Other Philosophical Essays on Language (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) p. 146.

“Is it not highly disgraceful and dangerous to make increasingly frequent attempts, either directly or indirectly (through silence), to publicly rehabilitate Stalin, his associates, and his policy, his pseudosocialism of terroristic bureaucracy, a socialism of hypocrisy and ostentatious growth that was at best a quantitative and one-sided growth involving the loss of many qualitative features?”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, The Threat to Intellectual Freedom

Loss

“The end of the world—was the sky going to open up, would the angels pour down the vials of wrath on a shaking land, and would God appear to judge the sons of men? He listened for the noise of great galloping hoofs, but there was only the wind in the trees.
That was the worst of it. The sky didn’t care. The Earth went on turning through an endlessness of dark and silence, and what happened in the thin scum seething over its crust didn’t matter.”

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 5 (p. 40)

Men, God, World, Angels

“It is on some, but not all, of these misty autumn day-breaks that one may hear the chorus of the quail. The silence is suddenly broken by a dozen contralto voices, no longer able to restrain their praise of the day to come.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“September: The Choral Copse”, p. 53.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "August: The Green Pasture," "September: The Choral Copse," "October: Smoky Gold," and "October: Red Lanterns"

Autumn

“Finally, she broke her silence and spelled it out to Dr. Burkley. Kneeling, John Kennedy's personal physician indicated her ghastly skirt with a trembling hand. "Another dress?", he suggested diffidently.
"No", she whispered fiercely, "Let them see the horror."”

William Manchester book The Death of a President

The Death of a President (1967)

Personality

“Long ago, some 12 or 13 years before Partition, I had a chance to pass by a meeting of Muslims in Delhi. The chaste Urdu and the weighty voice of the man making the speech at the moment, made me stand and stare. It was a bearded mullah wearing a fez. He was narrating some history which was new for me. The mullah mentioned several dates on which some decisive battles had been fought and won by the armies of Islam. …There were repeated references to swords and spears and horses and hoofs and countless clashes in which human blood had flowed copiously. In between, some one from the audience stood up and shouted ‘nãra-i-takbîr’. And the whole assembly roared back Allãh-o-Akbar with full-throated frenzy. Then the speaker moved to Sind and Hind. …And then, all of a sudden, the mullah’s voice sank and became almost a whimper. His face too must have fallen, though I could not see it from the distance at which I was standing. He was now telling, in very mournful tones, how Islam had failed to fulfil its mission in this ‘kambakht (unfortunate) mulk (country)’ which was still crawling with kufr (infidelism) in spite of all those arduous endeavours undertaken by the heroes of Islam. A funeral silence fell on the audience, and no one now stood up any more to invite another nãra-i-takbîr.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

History, Decision, Chance, Horse

“Later came 'the hour of solitude'. Inside my tiny bedroom-studio, I began my forty days in the desert; I do not know if they are over yet. With a desperate, feverish rage I took formal experimentation to maniacal levels. Each canvas was a battlefield where wounds multiplied ad infinitum. And then came the surprise. All that frenetic movement, all that gesticulation, all that unending dynamism, by dint of the scratches, blows, scars, divisions and subdivisions…. suddenly took a qualitative leap. My eye no longer perceived differences. Everything congealed in a uniform mass. What had been ardent ebullition transformed itself into static silence. It was like a great lesson in humility for the pride of my unbridled quest.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

1945 - 1970, A Report on the Wall' 1970

Solitude, Rage

“The snow fell solemnly, enlarging the silence; it came straight down from heaven, bringing an inexplicable mystery. Now and again a flake or two would alight on the windowpane, and those flakes were like little stars filled with light; other snowflakes would fall on the windowsill, slowly covering the crumbs that had been put out for the birds. I would ask: "Grandmama, would you tell me some things about heaven too?" And Grandmother would say: "Why do you say 'too'?"”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

"Because the snow comes from there, and it seems to be telling me that everything in heaven is white."
Les Tilleuls, p. 21
My Early Years (1968)

Star, Bird, Light

“Silence brings us new names
new feelings and new knowledge.
Dreams dress us carefully
in the colors of power and faith.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street, p. 98).
Book Sources, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (2008)

Faith, Dreams, Color, Feeling

“The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The bleak pale sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where the dead lay as they had fallen. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt; helmeted heads back-drawn in the death-throes, tilted red beards and golden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir the frost-giant, god of a warrior-race…”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" (1953)

Death, God, Sun, Dead

“Why?’ My mother’s question hangs in the still air of memory. The loneliness I have felt many mornings, however, has not made me forget that I am engaged in a highly public activity. I sit here in silence writing this small volume of words, and it seems to me the most public thing I ever have done. My mother’s letter has served to remind me: I am making my personal life public. Probably I will never try to explain my motives to my mother and father. My mother’s question will go unanswered to her face.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Life, Motivation, Question, Memory

“I ’m on the sea! I ’m on the sea!
I am where I would ever be,
With the blue above and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe’er I go.”

Bryan Procter (1787–1874) English poet

The Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Sea

“out of the mountain of his soul
comes a keen pure silence”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

19
XAIPE (1950)

Soul, Mountain

“It is strange, though true, that the happiest part of our life is the shortest in detail. We dwell on the tempest that wrecked, the flood that overwhelmed — but we pass over in silence the numerous days we have spent in summer and sunshine.”

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

Other Gift Books

Life, Summer, Parting

“And silence their mourning
With vows of returning
But never intending to visit them more.
No never, no never, intending to visit them more.”

Nahum Tate (1652–1715) Anglo-Irish poet and playwright

Dido and Aeneas (opera; music by Henry Purcell)

“There was no emotion in my blood. There was no anger. There was nothing. It was dead silence in my brain.”

Mark Chapman (1955) American assassin

Mark Chapman explaining how he felt when he committed murder http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2310873.stm

Anger, Dead

“Silence is a deadly poison when you have no words.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

All Fall Down
Heavy Rotation (2008)

“You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

On Compromise http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11557/11557-h/11557-h.htm (1874).

“People who suffer beyond the formulas of expression,— who are crushed into silence, and beyond pain,— want no display of emotion,— no bleeding heart,— no weeping at the foot of the Cross,— no hysterics,— no phrases! They want to see God, and to know that he is watching over his own.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

God, Pain, People, Suffering

“There is no evidence that a majority of Israelis want a two-state formula. In fact, if we add up votes won by all parties implicitly or explicitly opposed to the two-state formula, we will have a whopping 75 per cent of Israelis. Thus what Netanyahu mastered enough courage to say aloud is what most Israelis think in silence. The picture is hardly different on the Palestinian side. To start with, the Palestinians are divided in at least three camps. In one camp we have Fatah and its allies who have never formally committed to a two-state formula but have dropped hints that they might accept such a solution as a first step toward liberating the rest of historic Palestine, that is to say, what is now Israel, later. The second camp is dominated by Hamas, which is committed to the destruction of Israel in no uncertain terms. However, Hamas does not want a Palestinian state either. As the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is a pan-Islamist group dedicated to fighting for the creation of a global caliphate. In the third camp, there are more radical Palestinian groups, including the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, now the favored protégé of the Islamic Republic in Tehran. The IJLP leadership has repeatedly declared its support for a one-state formula sponsored by Iranian “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Who wants a two-state solution, anyway? http://nypost.com/2015/03/20/who-wants-a-two-state-solution-anyway/, New York Post (March 20, 2015). New York Post

Courage, Support, Thinking, Fight

“I know the reason why you keep your silence up,
No you don't fool me.
The hurt doesn't show
But the pain still grows
It's no stranger to you and me.”

Phil Collins (1951) English musician, songwriter and actor

"In the Air Tonight"
Face Value (1981)

Pain, Fools, Hurt

“The superior man honors his virtuous nature, and maintains constant inquiry and study, seeking to carry it out to its breadth and greatness, so as to omit none of the more exquisite and minute points which it embraces, and to raise it to its greatest height and brilliancy, so as to pursue the course of the Mean. He cherishes his old knowledge, and is continually acquiring new. He exerts an honest, generous earnestness, in the esteem and practice of all propriety. Thus, when occupying a high situation he is not proud, and in a low situation he is not insubordinate. When the kingdom is well governed, he is sure by his words to rise; and when it is ill governed, he is sure by his silence to command forbearance to himself.”

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

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Nature, Knowledge, Study

“(Silence) denies the existence of HIV/AIDS, and prevents discussion of the human rights violations fuelling the pandemic, and constrains the mobilisation of resources and partnerships required to expand the prevention and care”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

of HIV/AIDS
Address to the Pan Pacific HIV/AIDS Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, October 2005

Partnership

“Theological writing always transgresses itself, just as theological speech feeds on the silence in which, at last, it speaks correctly.”

Jean-Luc Marion (1946) French philosopher

Source: God Without Being (1982), p. 1

“I have twice seen Macready act; once in Macbeth and once in Othello. I astounded a dinner-party by honestly saying I did not like him. It is the fashion to rave about his splendid acting; anything more false and artificial, less genuinely impressive than his whole style, I could scarcely have imagined. The fact is, the stage-system altogether is hollow nonsense. They act farces well enough; the actors comprehend their parts and do them justice. They comprehend nothing about tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said so, and by so saying produced a blank silence, a mute consternation.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on William Macready. Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle, (by Clement King Shorter) (1896)

Justice, Imagination, Fashion, Failure

“And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of military government in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries. Now let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators. Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945, after a combined French and Japanese occupation. And incidentally, this was before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And this is a little known fact, these people declared themselves independent in 1945, they quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom. And yet our government refused to recognize, President Truman said they were not ready for independence. So we failed victim as a nation at that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony. And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years, trying to reconquer Vietnam. You know who helped France? It was the United States of America, it came to the point that we were meeting more than 80% of the war cost. And even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because France had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu. But even after that and even after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop. We must face the sad fact that our government sought in a real sense to sabotage the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem, who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition, people were brutally murdered merely because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence, and then by increasing numbers of United States troops, who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It's a man by the name of General Ky, who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we're supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government, and the press generally, won't tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.”

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

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Life, God, War, People

“It took one tweet on Monday evening as I left the office to light the virtual touchpaper. At five past nine I tapped: "Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?"… By the time I got home, after stopping off for a meal with friends, the Twittersphere had gone into meltdown. Twitterers had sleuthed down Farrelly's question, published the relevant links and were now seriously on the case. By midday on Tuesday "Trafigura" was one of the most searched terms in Europe, helped along by re-tweets by Stephen Fry and his 830,000-odd followers.
… One or two legal experts uncovered the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, wondering if that would help? Common #hashtags were quickly developed, making the material easily discoverable. By lunchtime – an hour before we were due in court – Trafigura threw in the towel. The textbook stuff – elaborate carrot, expensive stick – had been blown away by a newspaper together with the mass collaboration of total strangers on the web. Trafigura thought it was buying silence. A combination of old media – the Guardian – and new – Twitter – turned attempted obscurity into mass notoriety.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Alan Rusbridger " The Trafigura fiasco tears up the textbook http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/14/trafigura-fiasco-tears-up-textbook" The Guardian, Wednesday 14 October 2009; As cited in Paul Bradshaw, ‎Liisa Rohumaa (2013) The Online Journalism Handbook: Skills to survive and thrive in the Digital Age. p. 176. 2000s

Home, Search, Question, Light

“I feel you move me
in such sweet silence
always dancing, always dancing
never ever getting tired”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"Always Dancing, Never Getting Tired"
Universal Hall (2003)

Feeling, Dance

“What is it about silence that makes people uneasy?”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

People

“Another mother's breaking
Heart is taking over
When the violence causes silence
We must be mistaken.”

Dolores O'Riordan (1971–2018) Irish singer

"Zombie" (1993); written after the Warrington bomb attack of 20 March 1993 · Official video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ejga4kJUts

Heart

“I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know there are some people terrified of the bomb, but there are others terrified to be seen carrying a Modern Screen magazine. Experience teaches that silence terrifies the most.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

As quoted in "Cosmo Listens to Records" http://www.mediafire.com/view/za1l4i1dftotwg9/.png by Nat Hentoff, in Cosmopolitan (November 1965)

People

“If I ventured in the slipstream,
Between the viaducts of your dream,
Where immobile steel rims crack,
And the ditch in the back roads stop,
Could you find me?
Would you kiss my eyes?
To lay me down,
In silence easy,
To be born again.
To be born again.”

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

Astral Weeks
Song lyrics, Astral Weeks (1969)

Dreams, Kiss

“What matters in poetry is form, how words work together, the sounds and silences their combinations make. The ordered effects they produce on the attentive hearer.”

Michael Schmidt (poet) (1947) American poet

Lives of the Poets, Phoenix, 1988

“Friedan: I thought it was absolutely outrageous that the Silence of the Lambs won four Oscars. […] I'm not saying that the movie shouldn't have been shows. I'm not denying the movie was an artistic triumph, but it was about the evisceration, the skinning alive of women. That is what I find offensive. Not the Playboy centerfold.”

Betty Friedan (1921–2006) American activist

The Playboy Interview (1992)

Women

“However dark our lot may be, there is light enough on the other side of the cloud, in that pure empyrean where God dwells, to irradiate every darkness of this world; light enough to clear every difficult question, remove every ground of obscurity, conquer every atheistic suspicion, silence every hard judgment, light enough to satisfy, nay, to ravish the mind forever.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 275.

God, World, Question, Light

“For those who accused me of turncoatism, please allow introspection. Who is the real opposition? Those who do nothing but criticize and accuse fellow oppositionist thereby dividing the bloc? Or those who choose to keep their silence first and who carefully choose their words in their desire to keep the group together.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Philippine Star http://www.philstar.com/headlines/7336/opposition-war-erupts-ping-calls-colleagues-%E2%80%98political-mongrels%E2%80%99 2007

“If government, or those in positions of power and authority, can silence criticism by the argument that such criticism might be misunderstood somewhere, there is an end to all criticism, and perhaps an end to our kind of political system. For men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

"The Problem of Dissent" in Saturday Review, Volume 48 (December 1965), p. 81; also read into the US Congressional Record (26 June 1969)

Men, Thinking

“It occurred to me how very tired I sometimes feel as an outspoken feminist. … Trolls are trying to silence women, and I've installed a fiery declaration within myself to never give in, but it's incredibly hard, and gets harder as my platform as a writer grows. What didn’t occur to me initially is that West has spent years in the trenches fighting this endless, thankless fight, and maybe she needs a goddamn break. I had this revelation again, much more profoundly and emotionally, about my own mother while watching Greta Gerwig’s new film, Lady Bird. … Often, my mother and I clashed when she denied me freedom, but only because she had been harmed by the dangers she knew lay ahead for her daughter. I did so many risky, awful things, and then lied to her about them, because I never felt I could be honest with her. I should have known she wasn’t judging me. I should have known that she had done it all before, that even though she wouldn’t have used the word "feminist" to describe herself at the time, mostly she just didn’t want me to have to be so very tired. … Walking home from Lady Bird on the kind of night that New York fall fantasies are made of, I resisted the urge to call my mother, because I thought I might cry until the universe ripped apart at the seams. But then I called her anyway. I sobbed as I told her I had no idea how impossibly hard she had been trying.”

Lauren Duca (1991) American journalist

Sexism, Remembered and Forgotten (November 17, 2017)

Women, Feeling, Home, Idea

“Meanwhile Medea, though she was singing and dancing with her maids, could think of one thing only. There was no melody, however gay, that did not quickly cease to please. Time and again she faltered and came to a halt. To keep her eyes fixed on her choir was more than she could do. She was for ever turning them aside to search the distant paths, and more than once she well-nigh fainted when she mistook the noise of the wind for the footfall of a passer-by. But it was not so very long before the sight of Jason rewarded her impatient watch. Like Sirius rising from Ocean, brilliant and beautiful but full of menace for the flocks, he sprang into view, splendid to look at but fraught with trouble for the lovesick girl. Her heart stood still, a mist descended on her eyes, and a warm flush spread across her cheeks. She could neither move towards him nor retreat; her feet were rooted to the ground. And now her servants disappeared, and the pair of them stood face to face without a word or sound, like oaks or tall pines that stand in the mountains side by side in silence when the air is still, but when the wind has stirred them chatter without end. So these two, stirred by the breath of Love, were soon to pour out all their tale.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 948–972

Love, Beauty, Search, Girl

“Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the mathematics; for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws.
Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the Christian religion, which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put an end to the prestiges of the false Gods, itself reveres those Magi who came from the East, guided by a Star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXXII : Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, p. 841

God, World, Religion, Law

“I remember one vivid winter’s day at Versailles. Silence and calm reigned supreme,. Everything gazed at me with mysterious, questioning eyes. And then I realized that every corner of the palace, every column, every window possessed a spirit, an impenetrable soul. I looked around at the marble heroes, motionless in the lucid air, beneath the frozen rays of that winter sun which pours down on us 'without love', like perfect song.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 232
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Love, Soul, Question, Winter

“Music so wishes to be heard that sometimes it calls on unlikely characters to give it voice, and ears. This wishing-to-be heard calls into existence the Performance Event; where music, musician and audience may come together as one, in communion. This communion has six different forms of being and experiencing itself (plus an invisible seventh); and these forms, or principles, are simultaneously present within the Performance.
I - When people get together with music, something happens.
II - In a performance, things come together, mysteriously; and go better than we might anticipate; and better than we deserve.
III - A performance can take on a life and character of its own.
IV - Any one performance is a multiplicity of performances.
V - The possible is possible.
VI - The impossible is possible.
The Seventh Principle resides within Silence.
Trust the event.”

Robert Fripp (1946) English guitarist, composer and record producer

The Six Principles of the Performance Event

Life, People, Music

“There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. That it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 1, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

Life, Study, Appearance, Night

“Welcome to Raw Is Jericho! And I am the new millennium for the World Wrestling Federation. Now for those of you who don't know me, I am Chris Jericho, your new hero, your party host, and most importantly, the most charismastic showman to ever enter your living rooms via a television screen. And for those of you who DO know me, well, all hail the Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a!
Now when you think of the new millennium, you think of an event so gigantic that it changes the course of history. You think of a dawning of a new era. In this case, the dawning of a new era in the WWF. Thank you, thank you. And a new era is what this once proud and profitable company sorely needs. What was once a captivating, trend-setting program has now deteriorated into a cliched, let's be honest, boring snoozefest that is in dire need of a knight in shining armor, and that's why I'm here. Chris Jericho has come to save the WWF!
Now let's go over the facts. Television ratings, downward spiral; pay-per-view buy-rates, plummeting; mainstream acceptance, non-existent; and reactions of the live crowds, complete and utter silence. And I know why you're silent! You're silent because you're embarrassed to be here. And quite honestly, I'm embarrassed for you. And the reason why you're embarrassed is because of the steady stream of uninteresting, untalented, mediocre "sports entertainers" who you're forced to cheer for and care for. No wonder you're not cheering! You could care less about every single idiot in that dressing room, [indicating The Rock] and especially this idiot in the center of the ring. You people have been led to believe that mediocrity is excellence. Uh-uh. Jericho is excellence. And now for the first time in WWF history, you have a man who can entertain you. You have a man who is good enough for you. You have a man who can make you jump up off your chairs, raise your filthy fat little hands in the air and scream "Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go!"”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

Thank you.
The new millennium has arrived in the WWF, and now that the Y2J problem is here, this company—from the front-office idiots to all the amateurs in the dressing room, including this one, to everybody watching tonight—will never, ee-e-e-e-(slaps face) ever be the same... again!
August 9, 1999 - WWE Raw

People, World, History, Problem

“Tragedy has been and will always be with us. Somewhere right now, evil people are planning evil things. All of us will do everything meaningful, everything we can do to prevent it, but each horrible act can’t become an axe for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us. America must stop this predictable pattern of reaction. When an isolated terrible event occurs, our phones ring demanding that the NRA explain the inexplicable. Why us? Because their story needs a villain. … That is not our role in American society and we will not be forced to play it. … Now, if you disagree that’s your right, I respect that, but we will not relinquish it, or be silenced about it, or be told ‘do not come here, you are unwelcome in your own land.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

NRA annual meeting closing remarks http://www.nrawinningteam.com/meeting99/hestsp2.html, Denver, Colorado, 1999-05-01; referring to the complaints that some had that the NRA should not proceed to have its scheduled convention in Denver out of sensitivity to the fact that the Columbine shootings had occurred near the convention site; used on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Aug. 19, 2010) http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-19-2010/extremist-makeover---homeland-edition as reasoning why a proposed mosque near the site of the September 11th terrorist attacks must be allowed to be built.

People, Evil

“Anarchism is the purity of rebellion. A pig who struggles wildly and rends the air with his cries while he is held to be slaughtered, and a baby who kicks and screams when, wanting warmth and his mother's breast, he is made to wait in the cold—these are two samples of natural rebellion. Natural rebellion always inspires either deep sympathy and identification with the rebelling creature, or a stiffening of the heart and an activation of aggressive-defensive mechanisms to silence an accusing truth. This truth is that each living being is an end in itself; that nothing gives a being the right to make another a mere instrument of his purposes.”

Giovanni Baldelli (1914–1986) Anarchist theorist

Source: Social Anarchism (1971), p. 1

Truth, Nature, Waiting, Heart

“The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

The First Snowfall http://www.bartleby.com/248/351.html, st. 1 (1849)

Night

“"I'll sue you and the Sheriff's Department," he said, sounding more sulky than anything else. "Questioning me like a common criminal! And with an FBI agent standing over me in a threatening manner!"
Since Bishop was across the room leaning rather negligently against the filing cabinet, that was such an obvious exaggeration that Miranda could only admire it for a moment in silence.”

Kay Hooper (1957) American writer

Out Of The Shadows (2000)

Question

“But my father he didn’t read moon, he didn’t speak moon, and he didn’t write moon. So there was no letter found next to his body in the garage when he chose to leave this place on purpose without saying where he was goin’ or why. There are still days you can catch me tape-recording eternal silence and playing it backwards for an empty room just so I can listen to his dying wish. Shh.”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

Human the Death Dance
Poetry

Reading

“Tried myself in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The same trials have taught me that for ills so immeasurable, time and silence are the only medicines. I will not, therefore, by useless condolences, open afresh the sluices of your grief, nor, although mingling sincerely my tears with yours, will I say a word more where words are vain.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Adams http://www.masshist.org/database/transcription.cfm?transcriptDir=masshist&transcript=L5058.xml&queryID=1797 (13 November 1818) regarding the death of Abigail Adams 1810s

School, Feeling, Tear, Affliction

“Silence,” it has been said by one writer, “is a virtue which renders us agreeable to our fellow-creatures.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 23

“Only those afraid of the truth seek to silence debate, intimidate those with whom they disagree, or slander their ideological counterparts. Those who know they are right have no reason to stifle debate because they realize that all opposing arguments will ultimately be overcome by fact.”

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

The Reshaping and Redefining of America
Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine
2009-06-16
Threshold Editions
1439168571
17
2000s, 2009

Truth

“Apollonius accordingly paused for a minute and then, fixing his eyes, as it were, on the discourse he had heard, he spoke as follows: "… I am not come here to ask your advice about how to live, insomuch as I long ago made choice of the life which seemed best to myself … For I discerned a certain sublimity in the discipline of Pythagoras, and how a certain secret wisdom enabled him to know, not only who he was himself, but also who he had been; and I saw that he approached the altars in purity, and suffered not his belly to be polluted by partaking of the flesh of animals and that he kept his body pure of all garments woven of dead animal refuse; and that he was the first of mankind to restrain his tongue, inventing a discipline of silence … I also saw that his philosophical system was in other respects oracular and true. So I ran to embrace his teachings …"”

Philostratus book Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Book 6, § 11.
Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Life, Wisdom, Secret, Suffering

“No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied — it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (1985)

Mountain

“The word "Silence" today sounds "bridegroom" or the "tragedy of love."”

Joachim Kaiser (1928–2017) German music critic

quoted in Dieter Schott, Bill Luckin, Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud, Resources of the City: Contributions to an Environmental History of Modern Europe (2005), p. 225

Love

“God Himself is the nearest to hand, as the absolutely simple must be, and at the same time the most distant, as the absolutely simple must also be. God Himself is the irresolvable and at the same time that which fills and embraces everything else. God Himself in His being for Himself is the one being which stands in need of nothing else and at the same time the one being by which every thing else came into being and exists. God Himself is the beginning in which everything begins, with which we must and can always begin with confidence and without need of excuse. And at the same time He is the end in which everything legitimately and necessarily ends, with which we must end with confidence and without need of excuse. God Himself is simple, so simple that in all His glory He can be near to the simplest perception and also laugh at the most profound or acute thinking so simple that He reduces everyone to silence, and then allows and requires everyone boldly to make Him the object of their thought and speech. He is so simple that to think and speak correctly of Him and to live correctly before Him does not in fact require any special human complexities or for that matter any special human simplicities, so that occasionally and according to our need He may permit and require both human complexity and human simplicity, and occasionally they may both be forbidden us…”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

2:1
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

God, Confidence, Thinking, Distant

“May that day perish from Time's record, nor future generations believe it! Let us at least keep silence, and suffer the crimes of our own house to be buried deep in whelming darkness.”
Excidat illa dies aevo nec postera credant saecula. nos certe taceamus et obruta multa nocte tegi propriae patiamur crimina gentis.

Statius Silvae

ii, line 88 (tr. J. H. Mozley)
Silvae, Book V

Suffering, Time, Future, Housing

“Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an original affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a political history of truth would have to overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free--nor error servile--but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an example of this.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Vol. I, p. 60
History of Sexuality (1976–1984)

Truth, Error, History, Nature

“In the early days of modern computing - the 40s, 50s and 60s - computing was a priesthood. Only a few were allowed to commune directly with the machine; all others would give their punched card offerings to the anointed, who would in turn genuflect before their card readers and perform their rituals amid the flashing of lights, the clicking of relays, and the whirring of fans and motors. If the offering was well-received, the anointed would call the communicants forward and in solemn silence hand them printed manuscripts, whose signs and symbols would be studied with fevered brow.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Grady Booch (2011) " The Computing Priesthood https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/gradybooch/entry/the_computing_priesthood?lang=en" on ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/gradybooch. November 14, 2011

Communication, Study, Light

“The Triumph of Wit is to make your good Nature subdue your Censure; to be quick in seeing Faults, and slow in exposing them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called a Good Name, is made up of the Breath of Numbers that speak well of you; so that if by a disobliging Word you silence the meanest, the Gale will be less strong which is to bear up your Esteem.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

The Lady's New Year's Gift: or Advice to a Daughter (1688)

Nature, Strong

“Because we spoke so loudly, opponents of reproductive health access demonized and smeared me and others on the public airwaves. These smears are obvious attempts to distract from meaningful policy discussions and to silence women's voices regarding their own health care.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

CNN, (March 13, 2012).
Articles

Women, Health

“I put down the oars and float endlessly as if to the eternal shore. Blue light of the moon shines on my sail. My boat is gliding to a secure haven. Only silent waves break against it. Deepest silence surrounds me and my soul builds a golden bridge to a star.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Ich lege die Ruder ein und fahre endlos, wie einem ewigen Gestade zu. Mondlicht spielt blau auf meinem Segel. Mein Nachen gleitet in einen sicheren Hafen. Nur leise schlagen die Wellen an meinen Kahn. Die tiefste Stille ist um mich, und meine Seele spannt eine goldene Brücke zu einem Stern.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Soul, Star, Light

“Let us say that those who do insist on a hearing will be silenced soon enough. There is a monotonous pattern to the rise of tyrants which, I suppose, is reflected in the general pattern of human folly. Depressing though it is, we must accept the fact.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 2, Chapter 5 (p. 568)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

“they flock and they flee through the thunder of seem
though the stars in their silence
say Be.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

29
73 poems (1963)

Star

“…Copernicus was condemned for suggesting that the sun… was the center of our universe… Giordano Bruno was persecuted, and… burned at the stake for arguing that space extended beyond our solar system…. William Harvey was condemned… for suggesting that the heart was the center of the body's circulatory system… Each ultimately was proven to be correct…. Today U. S. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) are engaging in persecution of their own, attempting to silence dissenting voices”

David A. Ridenour

on climate change
David A. Ridenour, "Senators Try to Stifle the Global Warming Debate," Chicago Sun Times, November 16, 2006

Universe, Change, Sun, Heart

“I was going to tell you something very important. But it is so important I'd rather not say it. Only that which is not said is sincere… Only silence is sincere. The silence of someone who is sleeping, for example. How sincere is a sleeper! Sincere as a flower… It is in sleeping that everyone reveals themselves, because of the silence.”

Fernando Sabino (1923–2004) Brazilian writer

O encontro marcado [A Time to Meet] (1956), trans. John Procter, p. 210

Flowers, Sleep, Sincerity

“I don't like talking. I don’t like people talking to me... Painting is silence.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

People, Painting

“The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

"And the Rock Cried Out" (1953), reprinted in The Day It Rained Forever (1959)

“There was good reason for the silence of the Holy Spirit as to how, when, in what form Christ ordained the apostles, the reason being to show the indifferency of all forms of words.”

John Wycliffe English theologian and early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church

Latin statement in De Quattuor Sectis Novellis, as translated in Typical English Churchmen (1909) by John Neville Figgis, p. 16

Christ, Indifference

“The act of speaking, the release from silence, invariably meant that the prisoner would say too much, give something away, let slip an honest truth in the midst of the self-justification. Inspector Singh, like a fine piano-tuner, could listen to these verbal outpourings and pick up those hints of expression or emotion that were off-key and those that rang true. And so he waited for Jasper Lee to open his mouth, and a door to the truth, at the same time.”

Shamini Flint book Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder

Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, Cap 10

Truth, Time, Waiting

“In my fight for freedom and against the Islamization of the Netherlands, I will never let anyone silence me. No matter the cost, no matter by whom, whatever the consequences may be.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Statement of Geert Wilders during His Interrogation by the State Police (9 December 2014) http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4940/geert-wilders-police-interrogation 2010s

Freedom, Fight

“They weave a slow andante as in sleep,
Scaled yellow, swampy black, plague-spotted white;
With blue and lidless eyes at watch they keep
A treachery of silence; infinite.”

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) British poet

The Andante of Snakes, st. 1.

Sleep

“And all that we built, and all that we breathed
And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds
Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably
And we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)

“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The Weight of Glory (1949)

Friendship, World, Solitude

“The after-silence, when the feast is o'er,
And void the places where the minstrels stood,
Differs in nought from what hath been before,
And is nor ill nor good.”

William Watson (poet) (1858–1935) English poet, born 1858

The Great Misgiving http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-great-misgiving/.

“Om is the mysterious cosmic energy that is the substratum of all the things and all the beings of the entire universe. It is an eternal song of the Divine. It is continuously resounding in silence on the background of everything that exists.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

OM Chanting and Meditation (2010) http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/OM_Chanting_and_Meditation.html?id=3KKjPoFmf4YC,

Universe

“I had to perform in Béziers, In France, in a huge arena where they normally hold bullfights. There where a bunch of important people there, I was not that famous yet, so alot was riding on this performance, but the vibe was amazing. So a few songs into the set I yelled very enthusiastically ‘J’adore Béziers” Unfortunatly my French speech is not perfect so it sounded as J'adore baiser! The public did not respond, so I thought, with the wind they probably did not understand it clearly, so alot louder I yelled J'ADORE BAISER!!!! And then a deadly silence. Afterwords someone asked me, ‘doe joe know vot you ave just told all of France?’ Sure, I told’em I love’em…. euh not really…man I was dying! But the boss from the French record label said, don’t worry about it, they thought u where amazing, we will sell alot of records here.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Het stomende dubbelinterview: Natalia en Anastacia http://www.humo.be/humo-archief/29756/het-stomende-dubbelinterview-natalia-en-anastacia, Humo, September 27, 2010. General Quotes

People, Understanding, Perfection

Quotes about silence page 9

Quotes about silence
page 9