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Quiet Quotes

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Quiet Quotes

“Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow -- haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to -- I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline -- they aren't remade.”

“Theology is-- or should be-- a species of poetry,which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way you might listen to a difficult piece of music... If you seize upon a poem and try to extort its meaning before you are ready, it remains opaque. If you bring your own personal agenda to bear upon it, the poem will close upon itself like a clam, because you have denied its unique and separate identity, its inviolate holiness.”

“There is a proper way to greet the sentinels in Ceris, certain patterns and forms that you must observe when presented to Queen Islanzadí, and a hundred different manners in which to greet those around you, if it’s not better to just remain quiet.” “With all your customs,” Eragon risked saying, “it seems as though you’ve only made it easier to offend people.” A smile flickered across her lips. “Perhaps.”

“It's a bit like the feeling I get when I'm standing on a cliff or high building, looking down at a suicidal drop. I start thinking about what would happen if I stepped off, the rush of the fall, the shattering collision, the quiet emptiness of death. Part of me wants to experience the thrill of complete surrender.”

“You were firing questions at me today, trying to get inside my head. You asked if I believed in God. I told you of course I do- I've always had a strong sense of self. Your house is quiet now, you're sleeping upstairs and I'm alone with this blasted, idiotic book that purports to tally the sum of my life, and fact is, maybe I do. But maybe, ka-lyrra, your God doesn't believe in me. -- From The (Greatly Revised) Black Edition Of The O'Callaghan Book of the Sin Siriche Du”

“Anne’s horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen’s; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joys of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!”

“There is no such things as God's word on earth. Or if there is it is not to be found in books. -Then where is it to be found?- In love. In the laughter of children. In a gift given. In a life saved. In the quiet of morning. In the dead of night. In the sound of the ocean, or the sound of a car. It can be found in anything, anywhere. It is the fabric of our lives, our feelings, the people we live with, things we know to be real.”

“I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne--I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them...But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.”

“She was getting used to his rhythms and his moods, recognizing the quiet signals that telegraphed who he was. Good and bad, strengths and faults, he was hers forever. As she pulled into the driveway, she spotted Logan coming down the steps from the house, and she waved. She was his forever, too—imperfect as she was. Take it or leave it, she thought. She was who she was. As Logan walked toward her, he smiled as if reading her mind and opened his arms.”

“It was a quiet way - He asked if I was his - I made no answer of the tongue But answer of the eyes - And then He bore me on Before this mortal noise With swiftness, as of Chariots and distance, as of Wheels. This World did drop away As acres from the feet of one that leaneth from Balloon Upon an Ether Street. The Gulf behind was not, The Continents were new - Eternity was due. No Seasons were to us - It was not Night nor Morn - But Sunrise stopped upon the place And Fastened in Dawn.”

“Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, I wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?”

“There is a movement happening, a quiet one. A low-profile, low-resolution revolution. Comprised of writers and dreamers, of guerrilla artists and thought-ninjas. Those with something to say. They communicate through text inscribed on true public spaces, rather than blogs and forums. Choosing fewer words, even without being bound by 140 character limits. Using ink instead of pixels. Sending messages in living, breathing space. Pens scream louder into the void. Even if permanent ink is not aptly named.”

“It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city. At all hours it was necessary to keep a lamp lighted, and Mrs. Miller lost track of the days: Friday was no different from Saturday and on Sunday she went to the grocery: closed, of course.”

“Shh!" the guy beside me hissed again. "Blame him," I told the guy, pointing at Patch. The guy craned his neck back. "Listen," he said, facing me again. "If you don't quiet down, I'll get security." "Fine, go get security. Tell them to take him away," I said, again signaling Patch. "Tell them he wants to kill me." "I want to kill you," hissed the guy's girlfriend.”

“Po swirled upward from where it had been sitting, and floated over to the window. "When you go swimming and you put your head under the water," Po said, "and everything is strange and underwater-sounding, and strange and underwater-looking, you don't miss the air do you? You don't miss the above-water sounds and the above-water look. It's just different." "True." Liesl was quiet for a moment. Then she added, "But I bet you'd miss it if you were drowning. I bet you'd really miss the air then."”

“Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night!”

“Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.' He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly.”

“I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.”

“You know," he said with unusual somberness, "I asked my father once why kenders were little, why we weren't big like humans and elves. I really wanted to be big," he said softly and for a moment he was quiet. "What did your father say?" asked Fizban gently. "He said kenders were small because we were meant to do small things. 'If you look at all the big things in the world closely,' he said, 'you'll see that they're really made up of small things all joined together.' That big dragon down there comes to nothing but tiny drops of blood, maybe. It's the small things that make the difference.”

“No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.”

“Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.”

“And yet ... But what if ... I want to do something impossible. Something astounding and unheard of. I want to scrub the moss off the Space Shuttle and fly Julie to the moon and colonise it, or float a capsized cruise ship to some distant island where no one will protest us, or just harness the magic that brings me into the brains of the Living and use it to bring Julie into mine, because it's warm in here, it's quiet and lovely, and in here we aren't an absurd juxtaposition, we are perfect.”

“This moment and this chance, they are the same, and they are mine if I choose them,and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye, don't waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving.”

“I don't yell back at my mother. When I'm angry or scared or upset, I don't yell. I stay quiet. I've seen how she is, how she would get with Kent and with me and with other people, life if someone at the pharmacy got in the wrong line or asked too long a question, or if someone on the bus accidentally bumped her. I've watched her my whole life, the way people react to her. It doesn't actually help you get what you want, yelling and being like that. It only makes people think bad of you.”

“She'll have to get over it, then. Are you going to let her drop out of Dauntless for a stupid reason like not being able to walk?" Zeke is quiet for a few seconds. His eyes shift over my face, and he squints, as if weighing and measuring me. Then he turns and bends and wraps his arms around me. it's been so long since someone hugged me that I stiffen. Then I relax, and let the gesture force warmth over my body.”