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Silence Quotes

Browse 6767 quotes about Silence.

Silence Quotes

“When the man who knows all about the fruit fly chromosomes finds himself sitting next to an authority on Beowulf, there may be an uneasy silence.”

Knows Men May Next Silence He Man Authority Sitting Fruit Uneasy Chromosomes Fruit Flies

Author:Brand Blanshard

“Decide where and when you want to write. I like space, and silence is an inspiration to me.”

Want Writing Inspiration Space Silence Silence Is

Author:Cecelia Ahern

“I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?”

Knows Needs Looks Doe Important Order Asks Imagination Rooms Silence Students Music Is Ideals Important Things Chaos Release Serenity Silence Is My Imagination

Author:Toni Morrison

“For six years profound silence was mistaken for profound wisdom.”

Years Government Silence Six Profound Mistaken

Author:Alben W. Barkley

“There comes a moment during which almost every girl or boy falls into melancholy; they are tormented by a vague inquietude which rests on everything and finds nothing to calm it. They seek solitude; they weep; the silence to be found in cloister attracts them: the image of peace that seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish.”

“I have met people that said when their friend was dying, they made them promise that their funeral would be a party without people sitting in silence and in sadness. They want to celebrate their life and the life they lived and I try to adhere to that more.”

People Want Trying Made Said Would Be Party Silence Sadness Dying Promise Mets Sitting Celebrate Funeral Sitting In Silence

Author:Andrew W.K.

“Playing Destroyo, who was sort of a 'Silence Of The Lambs' type character, I'd say I was wearing about 50 pounds of rubber and foam rubber and makeup. But I had no idea who The Tick was. I'm not a big graphic-novel guy. I don't even know if 'The Tick' was a graphic novel!”

Ifs Knows Ideas Character Bigs Guy Silence Novel Type No Idea Makeup Pounds Graphic Lambs Rubber Tick Foam Graphic Novels

Author:Kurt Fuller

“If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks.”

Ifs Want Firsts Heart Speak Silence Praying Clean Heart Silence Of The Heart

Author:T. S. Eliot

“But hush! No telling to others that make so inquisitive questions. We must obey, and silence is a part of obedience, and obedience is to bring you strong and well into loving arms that wait for you.”

Wells Strong Waiting Silence Arms Obedience Silence Is Hush Inquisitive

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Bram Stoker (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Bram Stoker (Illustrated)

“Silence is what causes most of humanity's problems”

Problem Humanity Causes Silence Silence Is

Book:Teardrop

Source: Teardrop

“Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot tolerate having words wrapped around it. What it craves is secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you stay quiet, you stay in a lot of self-judgment.”

Ifs Self Silence Quiet Judgment Shame Tolerate Crave Secrecy

Author:Brené Brown

“America is a noisy culture, unlike, say, Finland, which values silence. Individualism, dominant in the U.S. and Germany, promotes the direct, fast-paced style of communication associated with extraversion. Collectivistic societies, such as those in East Asia, value privacy and restraint, qualities more characteristic of introverts.”

America Values Culture Silence Quality Style Communication Direct East Characteristics Germany Privacy Individualism Dominant Introvert Restraint Asia Fast Paced Noisy Finland East Asia

Author:Laurie Helgoe

“Before music there was silence and the duet format allows you to build from the silence in a very special way.”

Way Silence Special Format Duets

Author:Charlie Haden

“Silence is truth. Silence is bliss. Silence is peace. And hence Silence is the Self.”

Self Silence Bliss Silence Is

Author:Ramana Maharshi

“I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world; it is-THE CHARITY OF ITS SILENCE. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my name remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.”

Source: Irish eloquence: The speeches of the celebrated Irish orators, Philips, Curran and Grattan

“Some actors like encouragement. Some actors prefer to have pressure. And sometimes, for some actors, its better to give your comment by silence, because they are so skillful, so gifted, that they understand without talking too much.”

Giving Sometimes Actors Silence Talking Too Much Encouragement Pressure Comment Gifted Silence Is Skillful Talking Too Much

Author:Wong Kar-wai

“True friendship resists time, distance and silence.”

Silence Distance True Friend True Friendship Inspirational Friendship Long Distance Friendship

Author:Isabel Allende

“In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.”

Silence Objects Cease

Author:Thomas Merton

“And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history.”

World Trying Forget Poor Silence Rich Violence Events Conflict Painful Celebrate Division Gaps Congo Rich And Poor Inexplicable Outburst

Book:King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa

Source: King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa

“I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.”

World Mind States Together Used Joy Hours Love Is Silence Focus Teacher Pure Normal Instruction Guru Unfathomable Peace And Joy Embracing Love

Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“We move through the day like two hands of a clock: sometimes we overlap for a moment, then come apart again, carrying on alone. Everyday exactly the same: the tea, the burnt toast, the crumbs, the silence.”

Two Sometimes Moments Hands Moving Silence Everyday Tea Clock Toasts Crumbs Carrying On Two Hands

Book:Great House

Source: Great House

“There's something about the silence of people listening to someone or watching someone - I just... I love that.”

People Silence Listening

Author:Sam Heughan

“I don't listen to music when designing. We create in silence. I go through a torturous process because everything has to be precise and right.”

Process Silence Design Precise Listening To Music

Author:Francisco Costa

“Some days you exist like the last speaker of an extinct language. These are the silences that litter the heart.”

Heart Lasts Language Silence Speakers

Author:Richard Jackson

“I love going to London for a couple of days but I need to be in the country. I like the silence, the smell and the seasonal changes, especially in spring and summer. I really feel that I belong there.”

Needs Feels Country Silence Couple Summer Spring Smell London

Author:Philippa Gregory

“There are many justifications of silence; there can be none of insincerity.”

Silence Justification Insincerity

Book:The Principles of Success in Literature

Source: The Principles of Success in Literature

“I supply my own angels and demons. I exist on a stony beach, which lowers itself in waves toward a protective ocean. A dog barks; a child cries; the day sinks and becomes night. You can never scare me. No human being will be able to scare me ever again. I have a prayer that I repeat to myself in absolute stillness: May a wind come to stir up the ocean and the stifling twilight. May a bird come from water out there and explode the silence with its call.”

Source: Images: my life in film

“I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words.”

Needs Writing I Can Sound Silence Listening To Music

Author:Mohsin Hamid

“I despise charity. It gives crumbs to a few and silences the others.”

Giving Silence Charity Despise Crumbs

Book:In the Body of the World: A Memoir of Cancer and Connection

Source: In the Body of the World: A Memoir of Cancer and Connection

“Every woman must own her story; otherwise we are all part of the silence.”

Stories Silence

Author:Zainab Salbi

“I've heard a hundred different variations of instances of unadulterated female victimhood, yet the silence of the feminists is deafening. Where two pieties--feminism and multi-culturalism--come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.”

Way Two Different Silence Heard Feminism Conflict Hundred Female Feminist Instance Variation Piety Victimhood

Book:Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses

Source: Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses

“When I love, I love: wholly, thoroughly, completely, drowning in everything. Every glance can be a conversation, eyes just playing and saying what needs to be said. Silence is loud, and the air becomes heavy. I want you. I want all of you.”

Want Needs Said Eye Silence Air Conversation Heavy Loud I Want You Glances Silence Is Drowning

Author:Warsan Shire

“One disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound - strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow.”

Seems Sound Results Silence Sea Feet Strange Mark Winter Ghost Snow Substance Atmosphere Sand Cracks Garments Evoke Whispering Disagreeable Spooky Winter Snow

Book:Bleak House

Source: Bleak House

“... when he saw her sitting there all alone, so young, and good, and beautiful, and kind to him; and heard her thrilling voice, so natural and sweet, and such a golden link between him and all his life's love and happiness, rising out of the silence; he turned his face away, and hid his tears.”

Source: The Complete Novels of Charles Dickens: 20 Illustrated Classics in One Volume: Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield…

“Mr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys his wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than ever, he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at that twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows.”

Source: Bleak House ... With frontispiece by H. K. Browne

“Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places.”

Way Political Lying Common Silence Practice Truth Is Dirty Maintaining Another Way High Places

Book:Dirty Truths

Source: Dirty Truths

“Silence and modesty are very valuable qualities in conversation.”

Silence Quality Conversation Valuable Modesty

Author:Michel de Montaigne

“No art is superior to another one, but every art looks for expertise and perfection. This is life, which continues; this is why there is no death. There is continuation. There is no silence. There is a continuation of thought.”

Looks Art Silence Art Is Perfection Superiors Expertise Continuation

Author:Marcel Marceau

“There's one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die - their silence.”

Death Dies Silence One Thing Surprising Old Friends Stormy Death Of A Friend

Author:Ben Hecht

“Many CEOs and leaders think that silence is indeed golden, that consensus is bliss. It is - sometimes. But more often what it signifies is that there are no respected processes for surfacing concerns and dissent.”

Thinking Sometimes Process Silence Leader Concern Golden Bliss Ceo Silence Is Consensus Dissent

Author:Margaret Heffernan

“Engaging with children in troublesome thinking is problematic, but important. Ignoring the hard stuff and only engaging in the fluff and fun from curriculum choices is to keep underground issues of social justice and to further silence and compound the inequity”

Thinking Children Important Hard Choices Fun Social Stuff Justice Silence Issues Social Justice Engaging Compounds Curriculum Troublesome Fluff

Author:Janet Robertson

“It seems to me that if one had kept silence up to now regarding religion, people would still be submerged in the most grotesque and dangerous superstition ... regarding government, we would still be groaning under the bonds of feudal government ... regarding morals, we would still be having to learn what is virtue and what is vice. To forbid all these discussions, the only ones worthy of occupying a good mind, is to perpetuate the reign of ignorance and barbarism.”

“Meditation is helping me learn to sit still. Twenty minutes of meditation in the morning is a nice way to start my day. If you can actually sit still and really get to that place of silence, you realize what's important and what's not important. Little things don't usually get to me anymore.”

Ifs Way Littles Stills Important Helping Realizing Silence Morning Nice Meditation Minutes Twenties Little Things What's Important

Author:Ellen DeGeneres

“I like the way you can stretch things out and leave a huge amount of space that, on a record, would feel like silence. I enjoy the possibilities.”

Way Feels Enjoy Space Silence Records Possibility Huge Amount

Author:John Parish

“I don't get any anxiety. I don't because of two reasons. Number one, just breaking through it as a kid and finally getting past it was like okay, nothing's ever going to feel that scary again as that deafening silence of a joke not working. Any joke not working is not as bad as not being able to even try and get on stage.”

Feels Trying Two Reason Kids Able Past Numbers Silence Stage Anxiety Jokes Okay Scary

Author:Dane Cook

“People think we are such great talkers, but there is so much silence in Ireland about certain issues.”

People Thinking Certain Silence Issues Ireland Talkers

Author:Fionnula Flanagan

“Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.”

Silence Teacher Lessons Stones Communicate Valuable Observers Mute Valuable Lessons

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“In war personal revenge maintains its silence.”

War Silence Revenge

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“Whatever may be your desire to accomplish great deeds, the deep silence of pregnancy never comes to you! The event of the day sweeps you along like straws before the wind whilst ye lie under the illusion that ye are chasing the event,-poor fellows! If a man wishes to act the hero on the stage he must not think of forming part of the chorus; he should not even know how the chorus is made up.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Men Should May Made Lying Desire Wish Poor Silence Know How Stage Events Wind Hero Illusion Fellows Deeds Accomplish Pregnancy Chasing Chorus Straws

Book:The Dawn of Day

Source: The Dawn of Day

“For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind?”

Mind Eye Silence Minutes Mankind Ears

Book:Poems of William Butler Yeats

Source: Poems of William Butler Yeats