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Silence Quotes

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Silence Quotes

“I think that most of us are aware that as writers we are seeking absences, we're seeking silences, we're seeking spaces that people haven't entered. No writer is saying, "Hey, I want to go to this very well trod territory and say exactly what someone else has done." I think the nature of a writer, because we are attempting to bring to light areas that people haven't seen before, tends in some ways to be progressive, at least in that light.”

PeopleThinkingDoneSilenceAbsenceProgressive
Author:Junot Diaz
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“A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence, which costs us nothing.”

PeopleSpeakEasySilenceRelationshipCostIllObligationCivilityFriendship MemoriesGood WordsDealing With PeopleInspiring FriendsSilence Is Golden
Book:The Beauties of Dr. John Tillotson, Carefullet Selected from His Works [and] Containing His Admirable System of Early Education, Thoughts on Religion, Atheism and Infidelity, the Immortality of the Soul, Etc: To which are Prefixed Some of His Arguments for the Truth and Belief of the Christian Religion
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“People speak because they are afraid of silence. They speak mechanically whether aloud or to themselves. They are intoxicated by this vocal gruel that ensnares every object and every being. They talk about rain and fine weather; they talk about money, about love, about nothing. And even when they are talking about their most exalted love, they use words uttered a hundred times, threadbare phrases.”

PeopleUseSpeakSilenceTalkingObjectsFineHundredRainWeatherPhrasesVocalExaltedIntoxicatedFine Weather
Author:Andreï Makine
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“Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind, and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

PeopleIfsShouldHumansHeartRealFactsFeelingsWould BeLyingDiesGrowsSidesEmotionSilenceVisionMankindBearsElementsBeatsOrdinaryTragedyMovedHearingHuman LifeGrassUnusualImaginaryFrequencyDiscouragementSquirrelsHeart BeatCoarse
Author:George Eliot
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“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”

PeopleKnowsEyeWalksSilenceKnow HowToo MuchExerciseSpeechClothesTragedyCuriosityShoesEnduranceFitnessTrekkingQualificationsHealth And FitnessGood HumorPhysical ExerciseHealth FitnessExercise And HealthExercise HealthFitness WorkoutWellness And FitnessOld ShoesGood ExerciseWalking Shoes
Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.”

PeopleWorldFeelsStillsSeemsAbleTogetherYoungNextSilenceWatchesBreakTakenPerspectiveHolyPureWasteComfortablePerceptionDrawsLifetimeParadoxLost LoveSay AnythingSilence IsImpatientNotebookBrashNotebook LovePerception Of Others
Author:Nicholas Sparks
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“The facts of his existence are plain. I know that he will never silence those unspeakable voices. He heard how people killed, and how they died and their voices infected him, coursed through his body, poisoned him. He didn't know how to turn off the noise, or turn the hate back out onto the world like the rest of us. He turned it on himself. You could see that from the scars on him.”

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Author:Meg Rosoff
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“Katy was neither a Methodist nor a Masochist. She was a goddess and the silence of goddesses is genuinely golden. None of your superficial plating. A solid, twenty-two-carat silence all the way through. The Olympian's trap is kept shut, not by an act of willed discretion, but because there's really nothing to say. Goddesses are all of one piece. There's no internal conflict in them. Whereas the lives of people like you and me are one long argument. Desires on one side, woodpeckers on the other. Never a moment of real silence.”

PeopleWayLongTwoRealMomentsDesireSidesSilencePiecesLike YouConflictArgumentTwentiesGoldenInternalsGoddessTrapsSuperficialDiscretionOne PieceOlympianMethodistsTwenty TwoInternal ConflictWoodpeckers
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“I was left alone there in the company of the orchids, roses and violets, which, like people waiting beside you who do not know you, preserved a silence which their individuality as living things made all the more striking, and warmed themselves in the heat of a glowing coal fire.”

PeopleKnowsMadeLeftWaitingSilenceCompanyFireRoseIndividualityHeatCoalVioletLiving ThingsGlowingLeft AloneBeside YouOrchids
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is still the same. It's bad with large numbers. It's still taken by particularity. It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces while all the rest go blindly by, never coming to mind and never really missed. . . . I can't tell you how much I pass over in silence.”

PeopleMindStillsI CanEarthFacesImaginationDarkNumbersSilenceTakenFourBillionsMy ImaginationLarge NumbersIlluminatingFlashlights
Book:View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems
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“There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain had never admitted the possibility of other people. She wept then. Tears for the deaths of the littlest things: the castaway shoes of children; broken stems of marsh grass battered and drowned by the sea; prom photographs of dead women she never knew; wedding rings in pawnshop windows; the tiny bodies of Cornish hens in a nest of rice.”

PeopleChildrenBodyFoundSilenceSeaLonelinessPossibilityTearsBrokenSolitudeWindowEternityProfoundPhotographShoesAbsenceTinyRingsGrassDesperateStemRiceNestsPromTerrainHensBatteredMarshesWedding RingCastaway
Book:Sula
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“She was unaware that she was somewhat of a celebrity up in heaven. I had told people about her, what she did, how she observed moments of silence up and down the city and wrote small individual prayers in her journal, and the story had travelled so quickly that women lined up to know she had found where they’d been killed. She had fans in heaven..... Meanwhile, for us, she was doing important work, work that most people on Earth were too frightened even too contemplate.”

PeopleKnowsImportantMomentsStoriesEarthFoundIndividualHeavenPrayerCitiesSilenceFansFrightenedContemplatingJournalUp And DownImportant WorkMoment Of Silence
Author:Alice Sebold
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“If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard; Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in the darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the center of the silent Word. Oh my people, what have I done unto thee. Where shall the word be found, where shall the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence”

PeopleIfsWorldStillsDoneEnoughLightFoundLostSilenceDarknessSilentTheeUnspokenSpoken WordUnheardUnspoken Words
Author:T. S. Eliot
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“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully.”

PeopleIfsKnowsDifferentEndsCountryWholeMomentsBeautifulNightHouseSpeakAnswersRoomsSilenceWonderfulDoorsHeardHavensQuietCalmStormDawnPausesSilence IsVery BeautifulHushPhantom TollboothCountry Roads
Author:Norton Juster
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“January 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them have been well received by the readers. I write eight to ten hours a day until I have a first draft, then I can relax a little. I am very disciplined. I write in silence and solitude. I light a candle to call inspiration and the muses, and I surround myself with pictures of the people I love, dead and alive.”

PeopleWritingFirstsWellsLittlesHas BeensI CanBookLightInspirationHoursSilenceAliveReaderLuckySolitudeTenEightRelaxSurroundCandleMuseJanuaryLucky Day
Author:Isabel Allende
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“Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.”

PeopleThinkingYearsBelieveMatterHelpingChurchPrayerGriefSilenceCarCryPrayingMountainYears AgoDancingDetailsShowersEssaysBathroomGarageDance Floor
Book:Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
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“There is something about talking in the night, with the shreds of sleep around your ears, with the silences between one remark and another, the town dark and dreaming beyond your own walls. It draws the truth out of you, straight from its little dark pool down there, where usually you guard it so careful, and wave your hands over it and hum and haw to protect people's feelings, to protect your own . . . You can bring out the jaggedest feelings - if you are my wife and know how to state them calm - into the night quiet. They will float there for consideration, harming no one.”

PeopleIfsKnowsLittlesStatesFeelingsDreamHandsNightDarkSleepSilenceTalkingKnow HowWifeWallQuietProtectDrawsEarsTownsCalmWaveCarefulMy WifeConsiderationOver ItPoolFloatsRemarks
Author:Margo Lanagan
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“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence . . .”

PeopleIfsBookLastsSilenceCasesGoneClearEnvironmentAirTreeMembersCleanSpeciesEnvironmentalForestsDestroyedComicDirtyStreamsWildernessPermitPlasticPollutionCigaretteComic BookConservationVirginsExtinctionOur EnvironmentMother EarthZoosNature And EnvironmentBiodiversitySave Mother EarthForests And TreesNature ConservationClean AirAir And WaterThe Wild NatureEnvironmental PollutionDestroying The EnvironmentPaved RoadsDestroyed Nature
Book:The Selected Letters of Wallace Stegner
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