Best 3011 quotes in «silence quotes» category

Accuracy is the basis of style. Words dress our thoughts and should fit; and should fit not only in their utterances, but in their implications, their sequences, and their silences, just as in architecture the empty spaces are as important as those that are filled.

A Conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words.

Advent is the season of the secret, the secret of the growth of Christ, of divine love growing in silence…For nine months, Christ grew in his mother's body. By his own will, she formed him from herself, from the simplicity of her daily life.

Advent is a time of waiting, of expectation, of silence. Waiting for our Lord to be born. A pregnant woman is so happy, so content. She lives in such a garment of silence, and it is as though she were listening to hear the stir of life within her. One always hears that stirring compared to the rustling of a bird in the hand. But the intentness which which one awaits such stirring is like nothing so much as a blanket of silence.

Advent, this powerful liturgical season that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to understand a presence. It is an invitation to understand that the individual events of the day are hints that God is giving us, signs of the attention he has for each one of us.

A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp. And the world seems so fresh as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.

A fence to wisdom is silence.

A few times in my life I've had moments of clarity where the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think.

A friend of mine was married to an assistant church pastor who regularly beat her up. He was smart ?- he'd do it in a way that the bruises didn't show. For the longest time, she dealt with it. Who would believe the minister was a wife beater?! Meanwhile, my friend ? - An attorney! ? - Suffered in silence.

After a lifetime of silence, it is difficult then to speak.

After a few months without writing, months I've lived turned outward... I fear going deaf, not being able to hear the silence.

After a universal silence, Leo was the first to speak. “Did anyone else notice—” “Yes,” Catherine said. “What do you make of it?” “I haven’t decided yet.” Leo frowned and took a sip of port. “He’s not someone I would pair Bea with.” “Whom would you pair her with?” “Hanged if I know,” Leo said. “Someone with similar interests. The local veterinarian, perhaps?” “He’s eighty-three years old and deaf,” Catherine said. “They would never argue,” Leo pointed out.

After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if Tarrou had an idea of the path to follow for attaining peace. "Yes, he replied. "The path of sympathy.

After having struggled madly to solve all problems, after having suffered on the heights of despair, in the supreme hour of revelation, you will find that the only answer, the only reality, is silence.

After speech, silence is the greatest power in the world.

After one has been in a lowly position, one knows how dangerous it is to climb to a high place, Once one has been in the dark, one knows how revealing it is to go into the light. Having maintained quietude, one knows how tiring compulsive activity is. Having nurtured silence, one knows how disturbing much talk is.

Against Nature's silence I use action In the vast indifference I invent a meaning I don't watch unmoved I intervene and say that this and this are wrong and I work to alter them and improve them The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes

Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.

A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse.

A gift--its kind, its value and appearance; the silence or the pomp that attends it; the style in which it reaches you--may decide the dignity or vulgarity of the giver.

A good listener is usually thinking about something else.

A gripper of a read . . . Silence revives the cliff’s-edge drama of those Jazz age climbs and drives home the tragedy of Mallory’s death.

A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening.

A great silence has descended on me for the last six months. I am as silent as an Arab in the desert, as dry, thirsty, and full of wonder and rumours which do not materialize into camels or travellers at all, but just vanish into the silent spaces from where they came. I expect this is a good thing though it is extremely irritating - the brink of a voice and never a voice.

Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!

Al Gore’s not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. You got to have an enemy to fight. And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power. That was Hitler’s plan. His enemy: the Jew. Al Gore’s enemy, the U.N.’s enemy: global warming.

Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?" Mort thought for a moment. "No," he said eventually, "what?" There was silence. Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.

Aliveness doesn't happen in silence. Aliveness doesn't happen in repression. Aliveness happens in action.

All beneficent and creative power gathers itself together in silence, ere it issues out in might.

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.

All my days have I grown up among the Sages and I have found naught better for a man than silence.

All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence.

All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.

All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are....Ten seconds of silence.

All the streams carry the wisdom of the forest to the lake, and over there, silence replaces the noise!

All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity.

All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.

All persons who are enthusiastic that they should transcend the other animals ought to strive with the utmost effort not to pass through a life of silence, like cattle, which nature has fashioned to be prone and obedient to their stomachs.

All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

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.

All those layers of silence upon silence.

A lot of my work is process-oriented. I delve into my work and sit alone in silence and work with the material and process it, like talking to yourself.

Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?

A man seeking publicity works with the noise of voice; A man working for humanity seeks the silence of rejoice in life.

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.

Among all nations there should be vast temples raised where people might worship in silence and listen to it, for it is the voice of God

Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing; the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear; and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.

A man of virtue, judgment, and prudence speaks not until there is silence.

A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.

A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up.