Popular quotes about Silence! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 27
The tongue is a small member, but it does big things. A religious who does not keep silence will never attain holiness; that is, she will never become a saint. Let her not delude herself - unless it is the Spirit of God who is speaking through her, for then she must not keep silent. But, in order to hear the voice of God, one has to have silence in one's soul and to keep silence; not a gloomy silence but an interior silence; that is to say, recollection in God.
Mary Faustina KowalskaThe impulse to create begins - often terribly and fearfully - in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?
Adrienne RichWe need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Mother TeresaIn the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.
Mother TeresaAnd silence. She liked the silence most of all. The silence in which the body, senses, the instincts, are more alert, more powerful, more sensitized, live a more richly perfumed and intoxication life, instead of transmuting into thoughts, words, into exquisite abstractions, mathematics of emotion in place of violent impact, the volcanic eruptions of fever, lust and delight.
Anais NinYou know how it is in the symphony when you are listening to the symphony, the last notes die away, and there's often a beat of silence in the auditorium before the applause begins. It's a very full and pregnant silence. Now theology should bring us to live into that silence, into that pregnant pause.
Karen ArmstrongAdvent is a time of waiting, of expectation, of silence. Waiting for our Lord to be born. A pregnant woman is so happy, so content. She lives in such a garment of silence, and it is as though she were listening to hear the stir of life within her. One always hears that stirring compared to the rustling of a bird in the hand. But the intentness which which one awaits such stirring is like nothing so much as a blanket of silence.
Dorothy DayThere is an old proverb to the effect that 'all those who open their mouths, close their eyes!' The purpose of silence and solitude is to be able to see and hear. Control rather than no noise is the key to silence. James saw clearly that the person who could control his tounge is perfect (James 3:1-12). Under the Discipline of silence and solitude we learn when to speak and when to refrain from speaking.
Richard J. FosterThis silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more silent.' Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.
RumiWe need silence to be alone with God, to speak to him, to listen to him, to ponder his words deep in our hearts. We need to be alone with God in silence to be renewed and transformed. Silence gives us a new outlook on life. In it we are filled with the energy of God himself that makes us do all things with joy.
Mother TeresaThe Best Music you can ever hear in your Life is Silence -- silence of yourself, silence of your loved ones
Vinay KumarThere was only the dark infinity in which nothing was. And something happened. At the distance of a star something happened, and everything began. The Word did not come into being, but it was. It did not break upon the silence, but it was older than the silence and the silence was made of it.
N. Scott MomadayGardening gave me a way to work with silence; not "in silence" but "with silence" - it was a silent creativity.
Sara MaitlandOur view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin [of silence], so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. the spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world.
Maurice Merleau-PontyIf you demand money from someone in exchange for your silence, it's called 'blackmail'. If your lawyer demands money from someone in exchange for your silence, it's called a settlement. If you do big things they print your face, and if you do little things they print only your thumbs.
Arthur BaerSilence is a learned practice that requires far more than just not talking. Not talking is not silence; it's just not talking.
Caroline MyssIt's in the silence that I'm most able to hear the tiny voices that tell me I'm not good enough, smart enough, or cool enough. I try to hear them for what they are: my own creations. Sitting with them, letting them speak, hearing them out, and giving them back the silence that I'm now sitting in has shown me that, quite often, they shut up.
Eric LangeThe schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.
Simon WiesenthalBird leaves the land to enjoy the freedom; man leaves his thoughts to enjoy the silence. Meditation is man's flying to the land of silence.
Mehmet Murat IldanWinter invites white; white invites silence; silence invites peace. You see, there is so much peace in walking on the snow!
Mehmet Murat IldanSilence is a giver; it gives some things to you! Noise is a taker; it takes some things from you! Seek for the silence!
Mehmet Murat IldanWe believe profoundly in silence-the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit.
Charles Alexander EastmanMy poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence.
Anna KamienskaIf sound is music and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound. If the sound is effective, it should actually have a chemical - some sort of physiological - effect on the listener, so he doesn't have to hear that sound again.
Keith JarrettThis silent call you make, A silence so loud I fear the world knows it's meaning If you fill every corner of a room Where can I look? If I close my eyes the silence becomes louder! There is no escape from you The only way out is in
Spike MilliganYou know what I'm thinking?' Maggie said. I had no idea. 'Nope,' David replied. Apparently David didn't know either. Maggie turned to me with pleading eyes.'Our babysitter has the flu.' 'I'm sorry to hear that,' I replied. Dead silence. I honestly had no idea what Maggie was getting at, so I misread the silence. 'It's not serious, I hope,' I said sympathetically.
Lisa LutzEach one of us is called to become that great song that comes out of the silence, and the more we let ourselves down into that great silence the more we become capable of singing that great song.
David Steindl-RastDawn was coming. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
Patrick RothfussSilence is like a cradle holding our endeavors and our will; a silent spaciousness sustains us in our work and at the same time connects us to larger worlds that, in the busyness of our daily struggle to achieve, we have not yet investigated. Silence is the soul's break for freedom.
David WhyteMy sannyasins have to be creators, not through the mind but through meditation. And it comes of its own accord, one need not even think about it. So I don't teach creativity, I only teach silence. And then out of that silence much creativity comes. One is surprised oneself at how much one was carrying in one's being, unexpressed, at how great was one's potential. When one comes across it one cannot believes it!
RajneeshBehind us lay the great Antarctic Land; snow peaks rising beyond one another until by distance they dwindled away into insignificancy. The silence and immobility of the scene was impressive; not the slightest animation or vitality anywhere. It was like a mental image of our globe in its primitive state - a spectacle of Chaos. Around is ice and snow and the remnants of internal fires; above, a sinister sky; below the sombre sea; and over all, the silence of the sepulchre!
Louis BernacchiThe silence was killing me. And that's all there ever was. Silence. It was all I knew. Keep quiet. Pretend nothing had happened, that nothing was wrong. And look how well that was turning out.
J. LynnBefore music there was silence and the duet format allows you to build from the silence in a very special way.
Charlie HadenAs I age I am grateful to find that a silence has begun to gather in me, coexisting with my tempers and my fears, unchanged by my joys or my pain. Sanctuary. Connected to the Silence everywhere.
Rachel Naomi RemenWhat struck me most was the silence. It was a great silence, unlike any I have encountered on Earth, so vast and deep that I began to hear my own body: my heart beating, my blood vessels pulsing, even the rustle of my muscles moving over each other seemed audible. There were more stars in the sky than I had expected. The sky was deep black, yet at the same time bright with sunlight.
Alexey LeonovIn silence and in meditation on the eternal truths, I hear the voice of God which excites our hearts to greater love.
C. S. LewisThe voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and leaves you without a single word of comfort.
Alice HoffmanAccustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.
John LahrNo matter how grave the secret, how imperative absolute silence, someone would always feel the urge to confess, and an unleashed secret is a terrible force.
Tea ObrehtSpeech is the organ of this present world. Silence is the mystery of the world to come.
Isaac of NinevehA gift--its kind, its value and appearance; the silence or the pomp that attends it; the style in which it reaches you--may decide the dignity or vulgarity of the giver.
Johann Kaspar LavaterLet us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSilence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn no country has the historical blackout been more intense and effective than in Great Britain. Here it has been ingeniously christened The Iron Curtain of Discreet Silence. Virtually nothing has been written to reveal the truth about British responsibility for the Second World War and its disastrous results.
Harry Elmer Barnes