Peace And Stillness Quotes & Sayings

When a turbulent mind and wounded heart surrenders to grace, breathing is easy. — T.F. Hodge

Much of our suffering is caused by our false perceptions and attachment to mental images. We assume things to be true without really knowing whether they are true or not, then create a world of hurt for ourselves and others. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Our perception is our window to the world, and we need to wipe the dust off of our window often so we can continue to see through it clearly. — Joseph P. Kauffman

A solemn sadness reigns. A great peace is around us. In its light our cares of the working day grow small and trivial, and bread and cheese - ay, and even kisses - do not seem the only things worth striving for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood in upon us, and standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome, we feel that we are greater than our petty lives. Hung round with those dusky curtains, the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop, but a stately temple wherein man may worship, and where at times in the dimness his groping hands touch God's. — Jerome K. Jerome

We are here in a wood of little beeches:
And the leaves are like black lace
Against a sky of nacre.
One bough of clear promise
Across the moon.
It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me.
He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh,
Stilling it in an eternal peace,
Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands
Toward him,
And is eased of its hunger.
And I know that this passes:
This implacable fury and torment of men,
As a thing insensate and vain:
And the stillness hath said unto me,
Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame,
Out of the terrible beauty of wrath,
I alone am eternal.
One bough of clear promise
Across the moon — Frederic Manning

The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death. — Richard Bachman

There is in all our strivings a profound homesickness for God. When we touch another we touch God. When we look at a flower, its radiance, its fragrance, its stillness is another moment's experience of something deeper within. When we hold a baby, when we hear extraordinary music, when we look into the eyes of a great saint, what draws us is that deep homesickness for our true nature, for the peace and healing that is our birthright. This homesickness for God directs us toward the healing we took birth for. — Stephen Levine

You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

In his history of solitude, Anthony Storr writes about the importance of being able to feel at peace in one's own company. But many find that, trained by the Net, they cannot find solitude even at a lake or beach or on a hike. Stillness makes them anxious. I see the beginnings of a backlash as some young people become disillusioned with social media. There is,. too, the renewed interest in yoga, Eastern religions, meditating, and slowness. — Sherry Turkle

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger. — William Shakespeare

Many people have failing relationships because they have not really fallen in love with each other, but they have fallen for the mental images they have created of one another. We assume we know our partner, we think about them nonstop, creating many different ideas of who they are, what they like, and how we will be together, then as soon as our partner does something that doesn't fit with our mental image of them, we become sad, upset, confused, or heart broken. Our partner did not cause our suffering; we caused it, through our false perceptions and mental images. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Watch yourself with all diligence, lest the enemy steals near and robs you, depriving you of this great treasure, which is inner peace and stillness of soul. The enemy strives to destroy the peace of the soul, because he knows that when the soul is in turmoil it is more easily led to evil. But you must guard your peace. — Lorenzo Scupoli

Seek and listen for that silent sound of surety, in the stillness of peace succumbs your confidence. — Anthony Liccione

When we think of something, we create a mental image of it, and our image is then always filtered through our mental perception. We may meet someone one day when they are in a bad mood, we then make a false assumption that this person does not like us. We have created an image of this person, and now every time we meet them, we associate this person with our negative mental image of them. We don't interact with them as they are in this moment; we interact with how we think they are. — Joseph P. Kauffman

It is like the distinction between war and peace: just as war takes place for the sake of peace, thus every kind of activity, even the processes of mere thought, must culminate in the absolute quiet of contemplation.11 Every movement, the movements of body and soul as well as of speech and reasoning, must cease before truth. Truth, be it the ancient truth of Being or the Christian truth of the living God, can reveal itself only in complete human stillness.12 Traditionally — Hannah Arendt

The majority of people in modern society feel separated - from the world, each other, and themselves. This feeling of separation is a resultfrom we humans attempting to separate ourselves from nature, and consequently forgetting who we really are. — Joseph P. Kauffman

The moment your attention turns to the Now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace. You no longer depend on the future for fulfillment and satisfaction - you don't look to it for salvation. Therefore, you are not attached to the results. Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being. You have found the life underneath your life situation. In — Eckhart Tolle

Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace. In that stillness you will know what His will is. — Amy Carmichael

Have lots of plants in your house. Nature and plants understand something about stillness and silence. As you interact with the green world, you will find a peace will enter your life. — Frederick Lenz

In our stillness, we acknowledge God's greatness and we are at peace in our life. Stillness saturates us in the Presence of God. — E'yen A. Gardner

I now find peace in the realization that countless potential masterpieces happen each moment the world over and go unphotographed. The world owes a great debt to all those who have, from a state of exceptional awareness, preserved stillness for us to hold. — Dan Winters

One who will not accept solitude, stillness and quiet recurring moments ... is caught up in the wilderness of addictions; far removed from an original state of being and awareness. This is 'dis-ease. — T.F. Hodge

We spend a great deal of time telling God what we think should be done, and not enough time waiting in the stillness for God to tell us what to do. — Peace Pilgrim

Not forever can one enjoy stillness and peace. But misfortune and obstruction are not final. When the grass has been burnt by the fire of the steppe, it will grow anew in summer. — Jean Sasson

And so Gotama wandered into the town to obtain alms, and the two Samanas recognized him only by his complete peacefulness of demeanor, by the stillness of his form, in which there was no seeking, no will, no counterfeit, no effort - only light and peace. — Hermann Hesse

On an impulse he went into the room and stood before the window, pushing aside the sheer curtain to watch the snow, now nearly eight inches high on the lampposts and the fences and the roofs. It was the sort of storm that rarely happened in Lexington, and the steady white flakes, the silence, filled him with a sense of excitement and peace. It was a moment when all the disparate shards of his life seemed to knit themselves together, every past sadness and disappointment, every anxious secret and uncertainty hidden now beneath the soft white layers. Tomorrow would be quiet, the world subdued and fragile, until the neighborhood children came out to break the stillness with their tracks and shouts and joy. He remembered such days from his own childhood in the mountains, rare moments of escape when he went into the woods, his breathing amplified and his voice somehow muffled by the heavy snow that bent branches low, drifted over paths. The world, for a few short hours, transformed. — Kim Edwards

When you meditate you feel joy, harmony, peace, stillness, ecstasy, laughter, certainty, courage, strength, awareness and immortality. In the beginning you will feel these things vaguely, a distant knocking at your castle door. — Frederick Lenz

For me, embalming was a form of meditation; it brought a sense of peace that I had never found in any other aspect of my life. I loved the stillness of it, the quietness. The bodies never moved or yelled; they never fought or left. The dead simply lay there, at peace with the world, and let me do whatever I needed to do. I was in control of myself. — Dan Wells

It is in that inner peace and stillness that things begin to happen, and it was in that peace and stillness that I began to hear God's voice. — Eileen Caddy

It was such peace and heavenly freedom, just to fold her and kiss her gently, and not to have any thoughts or any desires or any will, just to be still with her, to be perfectly still and together, in a peace that was not sleep, but content in bliss. To be content in bliss, without desire or insistence anywhere, this was heaven: to be together in happy stillness. — D.H. Lawrence

Through our consciousness, we can enter the stillness of silence and become blessed with the universal presence of peace. — Georgi Y. Johnson

Somewhere there is a Dona of tomorrow, a Dona of the future, of ten years away, to whom all of this will be a thing to cherish, a thing to remember. Much will be forgotten then, perhaps, the sound of the tide on the mud flats, the dark sky, the dark water, the shiver of the trees behinds us and the shadows they cast before them, and the smell of the young bracken and the moss. Even the things we said will be forgotten, the touch of hands, the warmth, the loveliness, but never the peace that we have given to each other, never the stillness and the silence. — Daphne Du Maurier

Despite illness of body or mind, in spite of blinding despair or habitual belief, who you are is whole.

Let nothing keep you separate from the truth. The soul, illumined from within, longs to be known for what it is.

Undying, untouched by fire or the storms of life, there is a place inside where stillness and abiding peace reside.You can ride the breath to go there.

Despite doubt or hopeless turns of mind, you are not broken. Spirit surrounds, embraces, fills you from the inside out. Release everything that isn't your true nature. What's left, the fullness, light and shadow, claim all that as your birthright. — Danna Faulds

You can find God if you will only seek - by obeying divine laws, by loving people, by relinquishing self-will, attachments, negative thoughts and feelings. And when you find God it will be in stillness. You will find God within. — Peace Pilgrim

Maybe children just want whatever it is they don't get. And then they grow up and give their children what they wanted, be it silence or information, affection or independence
so that child, in turn, craves something else. With every generation the pendulum swings from opposite to opposite, stillness and peace so elusive. — Laura Moriarty

The sun, like a golden knife, was steadily paring away the edge of the shade beside the walls.The streets were enclosed between old, whitewashed walls. Everywhere were peace and stillness, as though all the elements were obeying the sacred law of calm and silence imposed by the blazing heat. It seemed as though mystery was everywhere and my lungs hardly dared to inhale the air. — Sadegh Hedayat

Life can sometimes feel like being trapped in the midst of a chaotic storm, swirling with darkness and debris, and no perceivable way out. But there is a way out. Seeking out the stillness of one's mind, challenging limiting perceptions and unloading the burdens of the past can allow a person to break free from the darkness and find a path to peace, joy and light. No one has to stay in the storm. Anyone can leave, if they choose. Hypnosis can help a person uncover the way to freedom. Once the path is revealed, all one needs to do is take it. And when they do, everything will seem possible. — Dawn Wheeler

Empty yourself of everything," he said. "Let your mind rest at peace. Ten thousand things rise and fall while the self watches. They grow and flourish and return to the source. Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature. The way of nature is unchanging. Practice your breathing and think upon this, Moirin. — Jacqueline Carey

If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having. — Eckhart Tolle

I get those fleeting, beautiful moments of inner peace and stillness - and then the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day, I'm a human trying to make it through in this world. — Ellen DeGeneres

Meekness is calm confidence, settled assurance, and rest of the soul. It is the tranquil stillness of a soul that is at rest in Christ. It is the place of peace. Meekness springs from a heart of humility, radiating the fragrance of Christ. — Matthew Henry

If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you become
one with. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen.
If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surrender. — Eckhart Tolle

Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom, and among the shrouded jugs and sheeted chairs even the prying of the wind, and the soft nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing, snuffling, iterating, and reiterating their questions - "Will you fade? Will you perish?" - scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the air of pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed that they should answer: we remain. — Virginia Woolf

[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead. — Wallace Stegner

The only way to gain power in a world that is moving too fast is to learn to slow down. And the only way to spread one's influence wide to learn how to go deep. The world we want for ourselves and our children will not emerge from electronic speed but rather from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls. Then, and only then, will we create a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it. — Marianne Williamson

All these years, her sole objective had been to keep still and hope no one would ever know. She had been a mistress of stillness. She had mastered the simulation of peace without a wisp of real peace, like a nun from a silent order who was screaming inside her head, or a yogi racked with pain. How she had managed to fool anyone, let alone everyone, mystified her (how obtuse people were!) and, oddly, made her extraordinarily bitter. Because the price of her gift for evasion was to have no one, not one person, who understood how horrible she felt. All the time. Absolutely all the time. — Jean Hanff Korelitz

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. — Joseph Conrad

If you can cut yourself - your mind - free of what other
people do and say, of what you've said or done, of the things
that you're afraid will happen, the impositions of the body
that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling
chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from
fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance
- doing what's right, accepting what happens, and speaking
the truth
If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind,
free of the future and the past - can make yourself, as
Empedocles says, "a sphere rejoicing in its perfect
stillness," and concentrate on living what can be lived
(which means the present) ... then you can spend the time
you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace
with the spirit within you. — Marcus Aurelius

Treasure of my soul," he said. He took one of her hands, brought it to his lips, and kissed it, just above the knuckles, as he had been doing every night for the last month, since their engagement. "You have brought me such peace."
"Ambrose," she replied, amazed by his name, amazed by his face.
"It is in our sleep that we most closely glimpse the power of the spirit," he said. "Our minds will speak across this narrow distance. It will be here, together in nocturnal stillness, that we shall finally become unbound by time, by space, by natural law and physical law. We shall roam the world however we like, in our dreams. We shall speak with the dead, transform into animals and objects, fly across time. Our intellects shall be nowhere to be found, and our minds will be unfettered."
"Thank you," she said, senselessly. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Garraty wondered how it would be, to lie in the biggest, dustiest library silence of all, dreaming endless, thoughtless dreams behind your gummed-down eyelids, dressed forever in your Sunday suit. No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex, or love. Absolute zero. No father, mother, girlfriend, lover. The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death.
How would that be? Just how would that be? — Stephen King

The two Samanas recognized him simply by the perfection of his peace, by the stillness of his being in which there was no seeking, no desire, no imitation, no attempts at being seen
only light and peace. — Hermann Hesse

In the utter peace and stillness the world seemed holding its breath, a little apprehensively, drawing near to the fire to warm itself. There was none of that sense of urgeful, pushing life that robs even a calm spring day of the sense of silence; life was over and the year was just waiting, harboring its strength for the final storms and turmoil of its death. The warmth and the color of maturity was there, exultant and burning, visible to the eyes, but the prophecy of decay was felt in a faint shiver of cold at morning and evening and a tiny sigh of the elms at midnight when a wandering ghost of a wind plucked a little of their gold away from them. — Elizabeth Goudge

Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness
stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine Essence. He has entered into His rest. That is our home; here we are on a pilgrimage, and Christ calls us to His many mansions which He has prepared. — John Henry Newman

Genuine spiritual practice requires us to learn how to stop the war. This is a first step, but actually it must be practiced over and over until it becomes our way of being. The inner stillness of a person who truly "is peace" brings peace to the whole interconnected web of life, both inner and outer. To stop the war, we need to begin with ourselves. — Jack Kornfield

There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;
It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace. — Robert W. Service

Be surprised at nothing. Let peace and stillness flood through you and envelop you completely in its cloak. Put on the whole armor of love - and yet feel, feel very deeply. Let tears flow, washing away impurities until you feel clean within and clean without. Become like an empty vessel ready to be filled with life's nectar. — Eileen Caddy

Start each day in my peace and stillness, then you can go forth and face whatever the day may bring in perfect peace and joy. — Eileen Caddy

There's serenity in the stillness of the water and my body absorbs it through my pours, desperate to find its peace. — Vi Keeland

There was a silence on the tors that belonged to another age; an age that is past and vanished as though it had never been, an age when man did not exist, but pagan footsteps trod upon the hills. And there was a stillness in the air, and a stranger, older peace, that was not the peace of God. — Daphne Du Maurier

Silence - people are afraid of it - they feel the need to make small talk, anything, just to break the stillness. I don't feel any such need. To me, silence brings about peace and certitude. — Henry Martin

Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares and the calm of our tempest; prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts, it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness. — Jeremy Taylor

We spend so much of our time lost in thought, trying to label everything as isolated objects and events. Though we fail to realize that our thoughts are incapable of defining anything in its totality. We can think about a situation for as long as we want to, but our thoughts will never know the situation exactly as it exists. — Joseph P. Kauffman

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage. — William Shakespeare

But for the time being, around my place at least, the air is untroubled, and I become aware for the first time today of the immense silence in which I am lost. Not a silence so much as a great stillness - for there are a few sounds: the creak of some bird in a juniper tree, an eddy of wind which passes and fades like a sigh, the ticking of the watch on my wrist- slight noises which break the sensation of absolute silence but at the same time exaggerate my sense of the surrounding, overwhelming peace. A suspension of time, a continuous present. — Edward Abbey

Well, you know, the mind is nothing. The mind is only a bunch of thoughts. Thoughts about the past and the future, that is all a mind is. But, the Heart is a center of stillness, of quietness, of Absolute Peace. When you rest your mind in your heart, you feel a joy and a bliss that overwhelms you, and you will Know. Surrender your mind to your Heart, and you will feel it. — Robert Adams

I'm not an expert in stillness, but I have been trying to practice more peace in my life. As someone who wants it all, and tries to go after it, I once thought including quiet time in my routine was a good idea. Now I find it's more than that - it's critical to my success. — Michelle McCullough

You cannot still your mind - it is the nature of mind to keep moving. You can only be the stillness that is beyond the mind and be free from thoughts, yet watch the mind experiencing the true essence of life. Transcending the mind is Sanyasa (detachment or renunciation) and freedom that comes with it is Nirvana (liberation). — Rashmit Kalra

The most fascinating revelation is that humanity can tune into a consistently higher frequency through the power of peace and inner stillness. — Christopher Dines