Quotes about whisper
page 5

Russell Brand photo
Thomas Hood photo

“Peace and rest at length have come
All the day's long toil is past,
And each heart is whispering, "Home,
Home at last."”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Home at last; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Matthew Arnold photo
J. Proctor Knott photo

“Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. ’T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks.”

J. Proctor Knott (1830–1911) American politician

Speech on the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill, Jan. 27, 1871; Knott made this satirical speech, sometimes titled as Duluth! or The Untold Delights of Duluth, while serving in the United States House of Representatives; the speech lampooned Western boosterism by portraying Duluth, Minnesota, in fantastical and glowing language.

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Forgotten Home http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21398/Forgotten_Home
From the poems written in English

John Boyle O'Reilly photo

“The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.”

John Boyle O'Reilly (1844–1890) Irish-born poet and novelist

A White Rose, lines 1-4, in In Bohemia (1886), p. 24.

Richard Pryor photo

“Rosa Parks showed us all that one little person can make a whole bunch of noise without so much as a whisper. She showed the world that the color of your skin shouldn't determine what part of the bus you sit in… as you ride through life.”

Richard Pryor (1940–2005) American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC

Post http://www.richardpryor.com/forums/msgs.cfm?msg=38560&forum=6 on US civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
Web-posts

Vladimir Putin photo

“It's difficult to talk to people who whisper even at home, afraid of Americans eavesdropping on them. It’s not a figure of speech, not a joke, I'm serious.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

(17 April 2014) http://on.rt.com/vqds8o
2011 - 2015

Nicole Krauss photo

“Franz Kafka is dead.He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." The people whispered and nodded among themselves. […] They turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers' shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees, Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children woke up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice.”

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 187

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon photo

“…the wild flowers blooming in hushed solitude
Start not at the whispering, 'tis but the breeze”

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon (1829–1879) Canadian writer

from A Canadian Summer Evening

Thomas Carlyle photo
Patrick Kavanagh photo
Connie Willis photo
Stephenie Meyer photo

“"I love you," I whispered.
"You are my life now," he answered simply.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, p. 314
Twilight series, Twilight (2005)

Michael Swanwick photo

“the grasses
whisper
"This
is
my
Body"”

Frederick Franck (1909–2006) Dutch painter

Source: Echoes from the Bottomless Well (1985), p. 98

Josh Homme photo

“My years of reading P. T. Barnum is finally coming into play. [snaps fingers] This notion of saying nothing, of keeping a secret, and doing it in a way that's not elitist but that's like, You wanna come in here and hear? [whispers] We have a secret. That's all that I can tell you. But you're involved. You know?”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Reported in Jay Babcock, " MUSIC IS NEVER WRONG: A visit with Josh Homme & John Paul Jones of Them Crooked Vultures http://www.arthurmag.com/2009/10/15/them-crooked-vultures/", Arthur Magazine (October 15, 2009).

Mos Def photo
Oliver Goldsmith photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Thomas Friedman photo
Thomas S. Monson photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Antonio Gramsci photo

“It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew (I had heard) that besides the sons we knew, this woman had another son nobody had seen, who was spoken of in whispers, as if he were a great disgrace for the mother, an idiot, a monster or worse. I remember that my mother referred to this woman often as a martyr, who made great sacrifices for this son, and put up with great sorrows. One Sunday morning about ten, I was sent to this woman’s: I had to deliver some crocheting and get the money. I found her shutting the door, dressed up to go out to mass, she had a hamper under her arm. On seeing me she hesitated then decided. She told me to accompany her to a certain place, and that she would take delivery and give me the money on our return. She took me out of the village, into an orchard filled with rubbish and plaster; in one corner there was a sort of pig sty, about four feet high, and windowless, with only a strong door. She opened the door and I could hear an animal-like howling. Inside was her son, a robust boy of 18, who couldn’t stand up and hence scraped along on his seat to the door, as far as he was permitted to move by a chain linked to his waist and attached to the ring in the wall. He was covered with filth, and his eyes shone red, like those of a nocturnal animal. His mother dumped the contents of her basket – a mixed mess of household leftovers – into a stone trough. She filled another trough with water, and we left. I said nothing to my mother about what I had seen, so great an impression it had made on me, and so convinced was I that nobody would believe me. Nor when I later heard of the misery which had befallen that poor mother, did I interrupt to talk of the misery of the poor human wreck who had such a mother.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci, 1965, p. 737 cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 35.

Leo Tolstoy photo
Torquato Tasso photo

“Fame, whose sweet voice whispers of phantom bliss
to you proud mortals, and who seems so fair,
is a mere echo, dream, dream lost in shade,
at every wind-puff scattered and unmade.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

La fama che invaghisce a un dolce suono
Voi superbi mortali, e par si bella,
E un'ecco, un sogno, anzi del sogno un'ombra,
Ch'ad ogni vento si dilegua e sgombra.
Canto XIV, stanza 63 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Conrad Aiken photo
Bono photo

“Beneath the noise, below the din,
I hear a voice, it's whispering,
"In science and in medicine,
"I was a stranger, you took me in."”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

"Miracle Drug"
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

Hartley Coleridge photo
Pete Doherty photo
Erik Axel Karlfeldt photo

“It whispers; all is waiting here
Kept safe for thee, year after year,
Beautiful songs in thousands;
Where hast thou been, where, where?”

Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1864–1931) Swedish poet

Attributed in Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, tr. Leif Sjoberg and W. H. Auden (1964), journal entry for (October 1, 1957).

Jacques Derrida photo

“In order to try to remove what we are going to say from what risks happening, if we judge by the many signs, to Marx's work today, which is to say also to his injunction. What risks happening is that one will try to play Marx off against Marxism so as to neutralize, or at any rate muffle the political imperative in the untroubled exegesis of a classified work. One can sense a coming fashion or stylishness in this regard in the culture and more precisely in the university. And what is there to worry about here? Why fear what may also become a cushioning operation? This recent stereotype would be destined, whether one wishes it or not, to depoliticize profoundly the Marxist reference, to do its best, by putting on a tolerant face, to neutralize a potential force, first of all by enervating a corpus, by silencing in it the revolt [the return is acceptable provided that the revolt, which initially inspired uprising, indignation, insurrection, revolutionary momentum, does not come back]. People would be ready to accept the return of Marx or the return to Marx, on the condition that a silence is maintained about Marx's injunction not just to decipher but to act and to make the deciphering [the interpretation] into a transformation that "changes the world. In the name of an old concept of reading, such an ongoing neutralization would attempt to conjure away a danger: now that Marx is dead, and especially now that Marxism seems to be in rapid decomposition, some people seem to say, we are going to be able to concern ourselves with Marx without being bothered-by the Marxists and, why not, by Marx himself, that is, by a ghost that goes on speaking. We'll treat him calmly, objectively, without bias: according to the academic rules, in the University, in the library, in colloquia! We'll do it systematically, by respecting the norms of hermeneutical, philological, philosophical exegesis. If one listens closely, one already hears whispered: "Marx, you see, was despite everything a philosopher like any other; what is more [and one can say this now that so many Marxists have fallen silent], he was a great-philosopher who deserves to figure on the list of those works we assign for study and from which he has been banned for too long.29 He doesn't belong to the communists, to the Marxists, to the parties-, he ought to figure within our great canon of Western political philosophy. Return to Marx, let's finally read him as a great philosopher."”

We have heard this and we will hear it again.
Injunctions of Marx
Specters of Marx (1993)

William James photo

“Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves. … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'" http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/exhibits/james/psychical/7_8.cfm, in The American Magazine, Vol. 68 (1909), p. 589
Often (mis)quoted as: "We are like islands in the sea; separate on the surface but connected in the deep", or: "Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest, which co-mingle their roots in the darkness underground."
1900s

Miranda July photo
John Banville photo
Robert Frost photo

“There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Mowing http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mowing-2/"
1910s

Steven Erikson photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Margaret Fuller photo

“Wouldst have the princely spirit bowed?
Whisper only, speak not loud,
Mark and leave him in the crowd.

Thou need'st not spies nor jailers have;
The free will serve thee like the slave,
Coward shrinking from the brave.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The Captured Wild Horse

Owen Lovejoy photo
Annie Besant photo
Alfred Noyes photo

“A shadow leaned over me, whispering, in the darkness,
Thoughts without sound;
Sorrowful thoughts that filled me with helpless wonder
And held me bound.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

"The Shadow" in The Empire Review (1923) Vol. 37, p. 620

Robert E. Howard photo

“"To the mistress of all true adventurers!" he whispered, choking on his own blood. "To the Lady Death!"”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Lost Valley of Iskander" (1974)

Oliver Goldsmith photo

“Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper circling round
Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd.
Yet was he kind, or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declar'd how much he knew,
'T was certain he could write and cipher too.”

Variant: A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew:
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the bust whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned;
Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too.
Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 199.

G. K. Chesterton photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Sathya Sai Baba photo
Francis Thompson photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“He sung,—the notes at first were low,
Like the whispers of love, or the breathings of woe:
The waters were hushed, and the winds were stay'd,
As he sang his farewell to his Lesbian maid!”

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

Arion from The London Literary Gazette (23rd November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IV
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Elton John photo
Isabelle Adjani photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo
Robert Graves photo

“Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame
That at the whisper of Love’s name,
Or Beauty’s, presto! up you raise
Your angry head and stand at gaze?”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Down, Wanton, Down!," lines 1-4, from Poems 1930-1933 (1933).
Poems

N. Gregory Mankiw photo
Van Morrison photo
Van Morrison photo

“In the land of a thousand dances,
I dance with you.
I was out I was taking my chances
When dreams came true
When you came into my dream
Like from a whisper to a scream.”

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

Heavy Connection
Song lyrics, A Period of Transition (1977)

Kris Kristofferson photo

“Lay your head upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body
Close to mine
Hear the whisper of the raindrops
Blow softly against my window
Make believe you love me
One more time
For the good times
For the good times..”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

For the Good Times
Song lyrics, Kristofferson (1970)

China Miéville photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Francis Turner Palgrave photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Cosmos is God, who whispered the syllable of life.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Cosmos,” p. 13
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Sky-Motion”

Henry Rollins photo
Paul Simon photo

“Never been lonely,
Never been lied to,
Never had to scuffle in fear,
Nothing to dive to,
Born at the instant,
The church bells chime,
The whole world whispering,
You're born at the right time.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Born at the Right Time
Song lyrics, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)

Don McLean photo
Umberto Boccioni photo

“The time has passed for our sensations in painting to be whispered. We wish them in the future to sing and re-echo upon our canvasses in deafening and triumphant flourishes.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 132.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

Steven Erikson photo
Samuel Beckett photo

“Hamm: Look at the ocean!(Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.)Clov: Never seen anything like that!Hamm (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke?Clov (looking): The light is sunk. Hamm (relieved): Pah! We all knew that. Clov (looking): There was a bit left. Hamm: The base. Clov (looking): Yes. Hamm: And now? Clov (looking): All gone. Hamm: No gulls? Clov (looking): Gulls! Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? Clov (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.) Hamm: The waves, how are the waves? Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead. Hamm: And the sun? Clov (looking): Zero. Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again. Clov (looking): Damn the sun. Hamm: Is it night already then? Clov (looking): No. Hamm: Then what is it? Clov (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.) Hamm (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray? Clov: Light black. From pole to pole.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

An explanation of the universe outside the room of Endgame
Endgame (1957)

Buddy Holly photo

“Words of love you whisper soft and true
Darling I love you.”

Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter

Words Of Love
Song lyrics, Buddy Holly (1958)

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster photo

“Never yet was a springtime,
Late though lingered the snow,
That the sap stirred not at the whisper
Of the southwind, sweet and low;
Never yet was a springtime
When the buds forgot to blow.”

Margaret Elizabeth Sangster (1838–1912) American poet, author, journalist, editor

Awakening.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Liam Gallagher photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“The power of the average pop artist and her products lies in the pornography that is her 'art,' in her hackneyed political posturing, and in the fantastic technology that is Auto-Tune (without which all the sound you'd hear these 'singers' emit would be a bedroom whisper).”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Harvey Sweinstein And Hollywood's Hos http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/20/harvey-sweinstein-and-hollywoods-hos/," The Daily Caller, October 20, 2017.
2010s, 2017

William Cowper photo
Alexander Pope photo

“Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister spirit, come away!”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“One sweet whisper from her came;
And he drank to catch her breath, —
Wine and sigh alike are death!”

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

(1836-3) (Vol.48) Subjects for Pictures. Second Series. II. A Supper of Madame de Brinvilliers
The Monthly Magazine

Elton John photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
David Brin photo
Lana Turner photo
Mike Oldfield photo
C. J. Cherryh photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo

“On his first hand he wore rings of stone,
Iron, Amber, Wood and Bone.
There were rings unseen on his second hand,
One was blood in a flowing band,
One was air all whisper thin,
And the ring of ice had a flaw within.
Full faintly shone the ring of flame,
And the final ring was without name.”

A poem from the second book of the The Kingkiller Chronicle, quoted in an interview at Fantasymundo (1 August 2009) http://www.fantasymundo.com/articulos/2207/fantasymundo_entrevista_patrick_rothfuss_nombre_viento
The Wise Man's Fear (2011)

James K. Morrow photo
Melinda M. Snodgrass photo
Gabrielle Giffords photo
James K. Morrow photo
Elie Wiesel photo
Bono photo