“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.”
Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
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Susanna Clarke 29
British author 1959Related quotes
“It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence.”
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 525
Context: It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.
“Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“If what one has to say is not better than silence, then one should keep silent.”
“It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.”
“Be silent and safe—silence never betrays you.”
Rules of the Road.
“In an endless silence even screams sound silent.”
“Scream,” p. 34
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “Forest of the Universe”
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.