quotations about silence
Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.
KHALED HOSSEINI
The Kite Runner
The best way to describe silence is to say nothing--but what grace!
GENE WOLFE
The Book of the New Sun
But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting--that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open--shut up the mind's eye--all will be music!
WYNDHAM LEWIS
One-way Song
We talked together through that silence in the language of thought. Nothing is more rapturous than these mute conversations.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Poems New and Collected
Silence gives consent.
POPE BONIFACE VIII
Canon Law, Decretals
It's not the reasoning
It's not the logic
It's not the questions
Third degree
It's not acceptance
No, it's not defiance
It's the silence
COREY GLOVER
"Silence"
When two people understand each other, what wonderful things they can convey in silence.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Silence", Reactions and Other Essays
Death's Waylaying not the sharpest
Of the thefts of Time --
There Marauds a sorer Robber,
Silence -- is his name --
No Assault, nor any Menace
Doth betoken him.
But from Life's consummate Cluster --
He supplants the Balm.
EMILY DICKINSON
"Death's Waylaying not the sharpest"
Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou
Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged,
Of one abyss, where life and truth and joy
Are swallowed up.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
fragment, Notebook 6
Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
Silence is a choice, it is not a secondary action, but a conscious decision made in a moment. This is not always something that we want to acknowledge. However, it is an important reality that we have the opportunity to confront head on.
MELISSA HURLEY
"Choosing silence", Record Bee, August 12, 2017
Silence is deadly and inaction = complicity.
WILLIAM GRAVELY
The Weekly Challenger, August 18, 2017
I am afraid you will forgive the length neither of my letter nor of my silence, and will be as much bored by the silver of the one as by the golden of the other.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, March 15, 1880
Empty afternoons of silence
Only the whirl of fans
Cutting through the air
SOCORRO PASCO
"Empty Afternoons of Silence", In the Silence of Dreaming and Selected Poems
Silence stopped us slipping into the lousy script.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Saying the things you do not have to say weakens your talk.
WILLIAM STAFFORD
Crossing Unmarked Snow
When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
ANSEL ADAMS
attributed, AB bookman's weekly: for the specialist book world