quotations about silence
What barrier is so insurmountable as silence?
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
To enjoy silence is a rare faculty. There are those who scarcely know what it means. They live in a world of reverberation. Even when they are alone their consciousness is noisy. If we had eyes fine enough to look in and to see what was going on we should find that they were always in a turmoil. They usually have a way of putting their idlest thoughts into words. To live with them may be a great trial. They trivialize life. They spread about them an atmosphere of fatigue. Their thinking is always on the surface, where they habitually live. The truth is that they have no time to do any real thinking. They never familiarize themselves with silence, where the real thinking is done, the thinking that goes down to the depths. As a rule, they cannot bear to be alone. No wonder. They have only the company of their strident thoughts clamoring to wear themselves out in words.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Silence", Reactions and Other Essays
Three things are ever silent--Thought, Destiny, and the Grave.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
Harold
Great hearts are free of either want or wish;
They may be proud and richly clothe themselves
In lofty, burdenless, mysterious Silence.
CARMEN SYLVA
"Out of the Deep"
There are haunters of the silence, ghosts that hold the heart and brain.
MADISON CAWEIN
Haunters of the Silence
Behind the word is silence. Behind that silence is forgetfulness.
GIANNINA BRASCHI
Empire of Dreams
It's not the shouting
Or the angry words
It's not those looks
Sideways glancing
It's not do as I say
It's not compliance
It's the silence
It's the silence
COREY GLOVER
"Silence"
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
Silence often enables us to see other people's imperfections, and helps us to conceal our own, but people with whom we associate might reasonably suspect us of emptiness if we indulge our inclination for silence on all occasions.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Silence and Concentration", Human Life from Many Angles
Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
Empty afternoons of silence
Only the whirl of fans
Cutting through the air
SOCORRO PASCO
"Empty Afternoons of Silence", In the Silence of Dreaming and Selected Poems
Silence is the perfect expression of scorn.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Back to Methuselah
The best way to describe silence is to say nothing--but what grace!
GENE WOLFE
The Book of the New Sun
In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
"True Love"
Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.
KHALED HOSSEINI
The Kite Runner
Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Tatler, February 14, 1709
It's not the reasoning
It's not the logic
It's not the questions
Third degree
It's not acceptance
No, it's not defiance
It's the silence
COREY GLOVER
"Silence"
Silence is the genius of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.
BERNARD DE BONNARD
attributed, Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1738
But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting--that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open--shut up the mind's eye--all will be music!
WYNDHAM LEWIS
One-way Song