Silence Quotes

• Silence not only lets you listen but to see things with much more clarity than you ever can.

  Gopichand Lagadapati

  Clarity

  Twitter post from Dec 31, 2013

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• Abuse exists because of secrecy. If I can use this platform and talk about it and break the silence, somebody can get the help and support they need. It's such a common problem, and it doesn't need to be. All you have to do is talk about it and break the silence.

  Chris Witty

  Help And Support, Abuse, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• Music is the application of sounds to the canvas of silence.

  Carl Jung

  Music, Sound, Canvas

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• Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude / And flew to the silence of sweet solitude.

  John Clare

  Sweet, Rude, Solitude

  John Clare, Eric Robinson, David Powell (2004). “Major Works”, p.413, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Silence is no weakness of language.
  It is, on the contrary, its strength.
  It is the weakness of words not to know this.

  Edmond Jabes

  Weakness, Language, Contrary

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• We should silence anyone who opposes the right to freedom of speech.

  Boyle Roche

  Freedom Of Speech, Speech, Should

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• Some persons talk simply because they think sound is more manageable than silence.

  Margaret Halsey

  Thinking, Sound, Persons

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

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• Uncovering secrets is apocalyptic in the simple sense (the Greek root means ‘an uncovering’). In this case, it lifts the shame covers. It allows articulation to enter where silence once ruled.

  Lewis Hyde

  Mean, Simple, Roots

  Lewis Hyde (2010). “Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art”, p.432, Macmillan

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• Who tells a finer tale than any of us. Silence does.

  Isak Dinesen

  Doe, Tales

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Last Tales”, p.105, Vintage

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• Solitude in the city is about the lack of other people or rather their distance beyond a door or wall, but in remote places it isn’t an absence but the presence of something else, a kind of humming silence in which solitude seems as natural to your species as to any other, words strange rocks you may or may not turn over.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Wall, Distance, Rocks

  Rebecca Solnit (2006). “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”, p.68, Penguin

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• The answers you seek never come when the mind is busy, they come when the mind is still, when silence speaks loudest.

  Leon Brown

  Mind, Answers, Speak

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• Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Intuition, Arriving, Tasks

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• Only when the mind is tranquil-through self-knowledge and not through imposed self-discipline-only then, in that tranquillity, in that silence, can reality come into being. It is only then that there can be bliss, that there can be creative action.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Spiritual, Reality, Self

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2013). “The first and last freedom”, p.50, Rajpal & Sons

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• If you believe the noises of the world, rather than the silences of your soul, you will be lost.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Believe, Soul, World

  Neale Donald Walsch (2005). “The Complete Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue”, p.565, Penguin

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• When it seems that God shows us the faults of others, keep on the safer side-it may be that your judgment is false. On your lips let silence abide. And any vice that you may ascribe to others, ascribe at once to them and yourself, in true humility. If that vice really exists in a person, he will correct himself better, seeing himself so gently understood, and will say of his own accord the thing that you would have said to him.

  St. Catherine of Siena

  Humility, Sides, Lips

  45 Copy quote

• Your nature is to keep quiet. You came from silence and you have to return to silence... you are dancing only for a little while you see... a little while you are dancing.

  H. W. L. Poonja

  Dancing, Littles, Return

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• Without marriage there will be no misery - and no laughter either. There will be so much silence...it will be Nirvana on the earth! Marriage keeps thousands of things going on: the religion, the state, the nations, the wars, the literature, the movies, the science; everything, in fact, depends on the institution of marriage.

  Rajneesh

  Marriage, Laughter, War

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• Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another.

  Maurice Maeterlinck

  Fashion, Real, Communication

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• Silently a flower blooms,
  In silence it falls away;
  Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
  The world of the flower, the whole of
  the world is blooming.
  This is the talk of the flower, the truth
  of the blossom;
  The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.

  Zenkei Shibayama

  Life, Truth, Flower

  Zenkei Shibayama (2012). “A Flower Does Not Talk: Zen Essays”, p.110, Tuttle Publishing

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• A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint, will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. - Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and cringes over the most obstinate and inflexible. - Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens; confounded their statesmen; struck their orators dumb; and at length argued them out of all their liberties.

  Joseph Addison

  Wisdom, Philosophy, Men

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• This silent call you make, A silence so loud I fear the world knows it's meaning If you fill every corner of a room Where can I look? If I close my eyes the silence becomes louder! There is no escape from you The only way out is in

  Spike Milligan

  Eye, Looks, World

  Spike Milligan (1993). “Hidden Words: Collected Poems”

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• Silence gives the proper grace to women

  Sophocles

  Giving, Grace

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• Sometimes it's better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all. Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.

  James Altucher

  Creativity, Thinking, Quiet

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• In light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban's attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.

  Theodore Beale

  Girl, Strong, Light

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• There comes a moment when the silence between two people can have the purity of a diamond.

  Philippe Djian

  Two, People, Moments

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