Quotes
Quotes about Silence
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.
I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;-- Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn.
He heard the convent bell, Suddenly in the silence ringing For the service of noonday.
Hark, how chimes the passing bell! There's no music to a knell; All the other sounds we hear, Flatter, and but cheat our ear. This doth put us still in mind That our flesh must be resigned, And, a general silence made, The world be muffled in a shade. [Orpheus' lute, as poets tell, Was but moral of this bell, And the captive soul was she, Which they called Eurydice, Rescued by our holy groan, A loud echo to this tone.]
To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speakingâand since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.
The music of the brook silenced all conversation.
In silence, . . . Steals on soft-handed Charity, Tempering her gifts, that seem so free, By time and place, Till not a woe the bleak world see, But finds her grace.
Feast of William Tyndale, Translator of the Scriptures, Martyr, 1536 God is our true Friend, who always gives us the counsel and comfort we need. Our danger lies in resisting Him; so it is essential that we acquire the habit of hearkening to His voice, or keeping silence within, and listening so as to lose nothing of what He says to us. We know well enough how to keep outward silence, and to hush our spoken words, but we know little of interior silence. It consists in hushing our idle, restless, wandering imagination, in quieting the promptings of our worldly minds, and in suppressing the crowd of unprofitable thoughts which excite and disturb the soul.
Thanksgiving (U.S.) Lord, I am glad for the great gift of living, Glad for Thy days of sun and of rain; Grateful for joy, with an endless thanksgiving, Grateful for laughterâand grateful for pain. Lord, I am glad for the young April's wonder, Glad for the fulness of long summer days; And now when the spring and my heart are asunder, Lord, I give thanks for the dark autumn ways. Sun, bloom, and blossom, O Lord, I remember, The dream of the spring and its joy I recall; But now in the silence and pain of November, Lord, I give thanks to Thee, Giver of all!
In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the Great Abbey, which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall.
Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence.
Yet still there whispers the small voice within, Heard through Gain's silence, and o'er Glory's din; Whatever creed be taught or land be trod, Man's conscience is the oracle of God.
Successful crime is dignified with the name of virtue; the good become the slaves of the impious; might makes right; fear silences the power of the law. [Lat., Prosperum ac felix scelus Virtus vocatur; sontibus patent boni; Jus est in armis, opprimit leges timor.]
There's a thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die; their silence.
At least when you are dead you will know what silence truly sounds like.
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
Anon, as patient as the female dove When that her golden couplets are disclosed, His silence will sit drooping.
Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance. . . . . And, when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence.
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. -Kahlil Gibran.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Now came still evening on; and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad: Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to they grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale.
Out of the dusk a shadow, Then a spark; Out of the cloud a silence, Then a lark; Out of the heart a rapture, Then a pain; Out of the dead, cold ashes, Life again.
'Tis silence all, And pleasing expectation.
A friend is someone you can be alone with and have nothing to do and not be able to think of anything to say and be comfortable in the silence.
