Silence Quotes
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All this talk and turmoil and noise and movement and desire is outside of the veil; within the veil is silence and calm and rest.
Bayazid Bastami
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We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.
William Arthur Ward
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There is a way between voice and presence, where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens; with wandering talk it closes.
Rumi
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As the surface of the seashore rocks were pitted by by the waves and gathered limpets that further disguised what lay beneath, so time made truth of what appeared to be. The days that passed, in becoming weeks, still did not disturb the surface an assumption had created. The weather of a beautiful summer continued with neither sign nor hint that credence had been misplaced. The single sandal found among the rocks became a sodden image of death; and as the keening on the pier at Kilauran traditionally marked distres brought by the sea, so did silence at Lahardane.
William Trevor
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My sister is also retarded. Across the board. She's a one hundred per cent, honest to goodness, born that way retard. I learned a long time ago that if you're going to tell a story about your retarded sister, you need to mention she's retarded right off the bat or inevitably, at the end of the story, someone will say, What... is she, retarded? And then you have to go, Uh... yeah, she is. Followed by a lengthy, awkward silence.
Bonnie McFarlane
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All still when summer is over stand shocks in the field, nothing left to whisper, not even good-bye, to the wind. After summer was over we knew winter would come: we knew silence would wait, tall, patient calm.
William Stafford
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A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
William Shenstone
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All art points to others with whom the writer argues about what is . . . He must have models with which to agree . . . or outright oppose . . . for Nature seems to remain silence.
Charles Bartlett Johnson
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Our 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-Ponty
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Silence, as someone has said, is the mother of prayer and the nurse of holy thoughts. Silence cuts down on our sins, doesn't it? We can't be sinning in so many different ways if we are being quiet before God. Silence nourishes patience, charity, discretion.
Elisabeth Elliot
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When I don't understand something, I reach up and hold God's hand. And we walk together in silence.
Mahatma Gandhi
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I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tired;my toes were beginning to ache.
Banana Yoshimoto
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Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.
Blaise Pascal
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Silence is the best answer to a fool.
Nnedi Okorafor
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There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be,- In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea, Or in the wide desert where no life is found.
Thomas Hood
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[Peace] is the highest and most strenuous act of the soul, but an entirely harmonious act, in which all our powers and affections are blending in a beautiful proportion, and sustain and perfect one another. It is more than the silence after storms. It is as the concord of all melodious sounds ... an alliance of love with all beings, a sympathy with all that is pure and happy, a surrender of every separate will and interest, a participation of the spirit and life of the universe.... This is peace, and the true happiness of [humanity].
William Ellery Channing
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Race is the great taboo in our society. We are afraid to talk about it. White folks fear their unspoken views will be deemed racist. People of color are filled with sorrow and rage at unrighted wrongs. Drowning in silence, we are brothers and sisters drowning each other. Once we decide to transform ourselves from fearful caterpillars into courageous butterflies, we will be able to bridge the racial gulf and move forward together towards a bright and colorful future.
Eva Paterson
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Silence ensures that history repeats itself.
Erin Gruwell
