Quotes about Silence

And for a long while they stood side by side without speaking, each seeing the other in every line of the landscape.

For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk in the tasselled meadow grasses, one looks up through a level roofing of maple-leaves at the vast, shadowless, and unsuggestive blue.

Archer reddened to the temples, but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock about it if it were left undisturbed

He hasn't written a line for twenty years. A line of what? What kind of literature can one keep corked up for twenty years? Wade surprised him. The real kind, I should say.

Evil prevails if good people say nothing. -

All general privations are great, because they are all terrible; vacuity, darkness, solitude, and silence .

To kill, in war or in any circumstance, creates a silence. It is right that silence should surround the taking of life. After all, the life taken is not ours to take.

When I compare my slow and unprofitable life with the frequent and wonderful mercies received, it shames me, it silences me, and leaves me inexcusable.

That's what happens in the early stages of contemplation. We wait in silence. In silence all our usual patterns assault us. Our patterns of control, addiction, negativity, tension, anger, and fear assert themselves. That's why most people give up rather quickly. When Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the first things that show up are wild beasts (Mark 1:13). Contemplation is not first of all consoling. It's only real.

If you can see silence as the ground of all words and the birth of all words, then you will find that when you speak, your words will be more well-chosen and calm. Francis

To keep the mind space open, we need some form of contemplative or meditation practice. This has been the most neglected in recent centuries, substituting the mere reciting and "saying" of prayers, which is not the same as a contemplative mind, and often merely confirms us in our superior or fear-based system.

Before you speak of peace, you must first have it in your heart. —St. Francis of Assisi13