“The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the sound is wafted over regions of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived.”

Source: Ulysses

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the sound is waf…" by James Joyce?
James Joyce photo
James Joyce 191
Irish novelist and poet 1882–1941

Related quotes

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“In an endless silence even screams sound silent.”

“Scream,” p. 34
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “Forest of the Universe”

Blaise Pascal photo

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

"The Misery of Man Without God": "Man's Disproportion," The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal translated from the Text of M. Auguste Molinier https://books.google.com/books?id=LbkIAAAAQAAJ Tr. C. Kegan Paul (1885)
Source: Pensées
Context: When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the small space which I fill, or even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and wonder that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, or now rather than then. Who has set me here? By whose order and design have this place and time been destined for me?—Memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis.
It is not well to be too much at liberty. It is not well to have all we want.
How many kingdoms know nothing of us!
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“This sound has its own silence; all living things are involved in this sound of silence. To be attentive is to hear this silence and move with it.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. II, p. 30
1980s, Letters to the Schools (1981, 1985)
Context: Attention involves seeing and hearing. We hear not only with our ears but also we are sensitive to the tones, the voice, to the implication of words, to hear without interference, to capture instantly the depth of a sound. Sound plays an extraordinary part in our lives: the sound of thunder, a flute playing in the distance, the unheard sound of the universe; the sound of silence, the sound of one’s own heart beating; the sound of a bird and the noise of a man walking on the pavement; the waterfall. The universe is filled with sound. This sound has its own silence; all living things are involved in this sound of silence. To be attentive is to hear this silence and move with it.

Eckhart Tolle photo
Laurence Tribe photo

“There are as many reasons to be silent as there are to speak, and as many ways to hear meaning in the sounds of silence.”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Soundings and Silences (2016)

T.S. Eliot photo

“The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.”

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

Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

Paul Valéry photo

“And do not humans strive in a thousand ways to fill or to break the eternal silence of those infinite spaces that affright them?”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 125
Valéry alludes to a famous pensée of Blaise Pascal: 'The eternal silence of these infinite spaces affrights me.' (Pensées, no. 201).
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

Herman Melville photo
Meher Baba photo

“This has been going on cycle after cycle, and millions of such cycles must have passed by, and will continue to pass by, without affecting eternity in the least.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Statement before 1955, as quoted in God Speaks : The Theme of Creation and Its Purpose (1973), p. 266.
General sources
Context: Whether there have been 26 Avatars since Adam, or 124,000 Prophets, as is sometimes claimed, or whether Jesus Christ was the last and only Messiah, or Muhammad the last Prophet, is all immaterial and insignificant when eternity and reality are under consideration.
It matters very little to dispute whether there have been ten or twenty-six or a million Avatars. The truth is that the Avatar is always one and the same, and that the five Sadgurus bring about the advent of the Avatar on earth. This has been going on cycle after cycle, and millions of such cycles must have passed by, and will continue to pass by, without affecting eternity in the least.

Related topics