Remain Quiet Quotes & Sayings

She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood.
She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here. — Neil Gaiman

By all means attend to your duties. Action, in which you are not emotionally involved and which is beneficial and does not cause suffering will not bind you. You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror like mind, which reflects all, without being affected. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remain quiet. Don't feel you have to talk all the time. Go within and you will see the Loveliness behind all beauty. — Paramahansa Yogananda

The one who follows the thought is also a thought! The one who follows the thought IS in thought. When you know that both are thoughts, you are home. You are not at home, you ARE home. Then allow thoughts to arise and allow them to be followed. You remain as That unmoved and unconcerned Being. This is the highest understanding. — H.W.L. Poonja

It will hardly be wise to adopt the suggestion ... that we must stop treating the little sins as though they were big sins. That suggestion means apparently, that we must not worry too much about the little sins, but must let them remain unmolested. With regard to such an expedient, it may be suggested that in the moral battle: we are fighting against a very resourceful enemy, who does not reveal the position of his guns by desultory (lacking purpose) artillery actions when he plans a great attack. In the moral battle, as in the Great European War, the quiet sectors are usually the most dangerous. It's through the "little sins" that Satan gains an entrance into our lives. Probably, therefore, it will be prudent to watch all sectors of the front and lose no time about introducing the unity of command. — J. Gresham Machen

How do you meditate? You meditate with an inner cry. There should be an inner cry here, in the heart. The outer cry is ego-centred; it wants name and fame ... While you are feeling this inner cry, you try to make the mind absolutely calm and quiet. If a thought enters your mind, you try to reject it. Consider this thought as a fly. When a fly comes to land on your arm, you don't allow the fly to remain; you just wave your hand and it goes away. — Sri Chinmoy

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.
In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot. — Rainer Maria Rilke

To preserve the silence within
amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens
no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky. — Dag Hammarskjold

For some reason, Bella doesn't want to scream. I guess she doesn't want Edward and the others to know how much pain she's in. But don't for a minute think this makes her a strong character. If anything, it makes her weaker, because she's so afraid of upsetting Edward that she's willing to suffer horrible pain without making a peep.
A strong character would remain silent during an interrogation, when speaking or screaming would give the enemy the upper hand. Keeping quiet because you don't want your boyfriend to feel sad isn't a sign of strength. It's pathetic. — Dan Bergstein

Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul. — Francis Weller

All the while, Sayeed Faddoul would be watching from the small kitchen, a smile in his eyes. Another man might grow jealous of his wife's attentions, but not him. Sayeed was a quiet man - not awkward, as Arbeely could be, but possessed of a calm and steady nature that complemented his wife's heartfelt vivacity. He knew that it was his presence that let Maryam be so free; an unmarried woman, or one whose husband was less visible, would be forced to rein in her exuberance, or else risk the sorts of insinuations that might damage her name. But everyone could see that Sayeed was proud of his wife and was more than content to remain the unobtrusive partner, allowing her to shine. — Helene Wecker

It would perhaps be as well if things were to remain quiet for a few years yet, so that all this 1848 democracy has time to rot away. — Karl Marx

Rest and quiet are the comforts of those who have been content to remain in obscurity. — Anthony Trollope

Does one require proof of one's own being? Only remain aware of yourself and all else will be known. — Ramana Maharshi

God, teach me to be patient, teach me to go slow,
Teach me how to wait on You when my way I do not know.
Teach me sweet forbearance when things do not go right
So I remain unruffled when others grow uptight.
Teach me how to quiet my racing, rising heart
So I might hear the answer You are trying to impart.
Teach me to let go, dear God, and pray undisturbed until
My heart is filled with inner peace and I learn to know your will. — Helen Steiner Rice

And though they may have many scruples that they are wasting time, and that it may be better for them to betake themselves to some other good work, seeing that in prayer and meditation they are become helpless; yet let them be patient with themselves, and remain quiet, for that which they are uneasy about is their own satisfaction and liberty of spirit. If they were now to exert their inferior faculties, they would simply hinder and ruin the good which, in that repose, God is working in the soul; for if a man while sitting for his portrait cannot be still, but moves about, the painter will never depict his face, and even the work already done will be spoiled. — San Juan De La Cruz

There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet. — George Eliot

Time Does Not Bring Relief
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, - so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The environment itself will teach the child, if every error he makes is manifest to him, without the intervention of a parent of teacher, who should remain a quiet observer of all that happens. — Maria Montessori

It galls me that seeking out the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is the expected (if not altogether acceptable) behavior of male writers; it would surely benefit me, as a writer, if I had the courage to seek out more of the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant myself. But women who seek out such things are made to feel ashamed, or else they sound stridently ridiculous in defending themselves
as if they're bragging ... Yet there are subjects that remain off-limits for women writers. It's not unlike that dichotomy which exists regarding one's sexual past: it is permissible, even attractive, for a man to have had one, but if a woman has had a sexual past, she'd better keep quiet about it. — John Irving

His instructions for the flight had been unequivocal. He was to remain quiet and anonymous, avoiding unnecessary conversation and making every effort to appear as invisible as possible. He presumed this meant someone had ensured that the aisle seat would remain empty. Surely an intelligence expert of any quality - particularly a British one - would not expect an Irishman to sit next to someone for nine hours without talking. — Kathryn Guare

I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat. — Simone De Beauvoir

I talked about places, about the ways that we often talk about love of place, by which we mean our love for places, but seldom of how the places love us back, of what they give us. They give us continuity, something to return to, and offer a familiarity that allows some portion of our lives to remain connected and coherent ... And distant places give us refuge in territories where our own histories aren't so deeply entrenched and we can imagine other stories, other selves, or just drink up quiet and respite. — Rebecca Solnit

In this life, all symphonies remain unfinished. Our deep longings are never really satisfied. What this means, among other things, is that we are not restful creatures who sometimes get restless, fulfilled people who sometimes are dissatisfied, serene people who sometimes experience disquiet. Rather, we are restless people who occasionally find rest, dissatisfied people who occasionally find fulfillment, and disquieted people who occasionally find serenity. We do not naturally default into rest, satisfaction, and quiet but into their opposite. — Ronald Rolheiser

Even children may intuit love's more complex responsibilities from time to time, and to sense that in some cases it may be kinder to remain quiet. — Stephen King

The nation, taken as a whole, will be less brilliant, less glorious, and perhaps less strong; but the majority of the citizens will enjoy a greater degree of prosperity, and the people will remain quiet, not because it despairs of amelioration, but because it is conscious of the advantages of its condition. — Alexis De Tocqueville

It is evident that the chief feeling induced by woody country is one of reverence for its antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, which is enhanced by the green and elastic vigor of the young saplings; the noble form of the forest aisles, and the subdued light which penetrates their entangled boughs, combine to add to the impression; and the whole character of the scene is calculated to excite conservative feeling. The man who could remain a radical in a wood country is a disgrace to his species. — John Ruskin

Indians want to respect the managers, so at times, don't ask questions. Americans want to respect the managers so they do ask questions to show they were listening and to not to take up time later on. So the underlying value is respect for both sides. However for Indians, it's a matter of saving face - just in case everyone else has understood, they remain quiet, not wanting to be the only one needing an explanation. — Ranjini Manian & Joanne Grady Huskey

The room was full with voices, loud music and beautiful people milling about everywhere. But all I noticed was her; beautiful, elegant and sitting alone in a quiet corner trying to remain unseen, to blend in, to become invisible, as if she actually thought such a thing were possible. — Tonny K. Brown

Silence frees us from the need to control others. One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. A frantic stream of words flows from us in an attempt to straighten others out. We want so desperately for them to agree with us, to see things our way. We evaluate people, judge people, condemn people. We devour people with our words. Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on that.
When we become quiet enough to let go of people, we learn compassion for them. — Richard J. Foster

Sometimes it feels like I have so much to say, yet none of the ability to actually articulate it. So I remain silent, a quiet observer of human life as it orbits around me, so bright and fascinating. It catches right in my lungs, this need to express myself, and burns like a river of fire up to my vocal chords, stunting everything that's inside, struggling to break out.
Florence Vaine, A Vision of Green — L. H. Cosway

In quiet crevices, life is born over and over again, without witness, without recognition. It happens, feverishly or serenely, fast or slow, and the guardians or propriety remain laughably ignorant. — Mai Al-Nakib

Silence and chaste reserve is woman's genuine praise, and to remain quiet within the house. — Euripides

Make no sounds. Do not, under any circumstances, make any sounds.
She faltered. A whimper of unutterable pleasure escaped her tightly clenched teeth.
Deep inside her, a dam that had been ceaselessly reinforced crumbled. Years upon years of pent-up desires flooded her. Suddenly she couldn't care less that she must remain quiet and pliant.
She wanted. She wanted. She wanted.
She gripped him by the lapel and yanked him to her. — Sherry Thomas

I should like this sky, this quiet water, to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. — Simone De Beauvoir

We are usually angered when someone insults us, until Divine Grace comes upon us. When we receive Grace, we no longer feel hurt when others insult us but remain quiet and peaceful, as though the insult was not directed at us at all. — Thaddeus Of Vitovnica

Reese, honey, victims are victims when they remain quiet. They gain power when they speak out. — Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Make your enemy afraid, for it is impossible to remain quiet about their moral offences. — Muqtada Al Sadr

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. — Franz Kafka

Because of watching your breath and thoughts you have come to know now that you are neither thoughts nor your breath, you are the watcher, the witness. This is awareness. This is what I call meditation. Once you have known this awareness you are unidentified with your body, with your mind. Now you experience a vastness inside you, in one sense utterly empty and in another sense overflowingly full. Because of its emptiness you will remain calm and quiet. And because of its overflowing fullness you will be creative. — Rajneesh

At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God's hand until we learn to hear Him ... Watch where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there keep your mouth shut. Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? Then remain quiet ... When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light. — Oswald Chambers

A prince ought to have two fears one from within on account of his subjects the other from without on account of external powers. From the latter he is defended by being well armed and having good allies and if he is well armed he will have good friends and affairs will always remain quiet within when they are quiet without unless they should have been already disturbed by conspiracy and even should affairs outside be disturbed if he has carried out his preparations and has lived as I have said as long as he does not despair he will resist every attack. — Niccolo Machiavelli

All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you'll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being "left alone," is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant. — Glenn Greenwald

Mary is a woman who loves. How could it be otherwise? As a believer who in faith thinks with God's thoughts and wills with God's will, she cannot fail to be a woman who loves. We sense this in her quiet gestures, as recounted by the infancy narratives in the Gospel. We see it in the delicacy with which she recognizes the need of the spouses at Cana and makes it known to Jesus. We see it in the humility with which she recedes into the background during Jesus' public life, knowing that the Son must establish a new family and that the Mother's hour will come only with the Cross, which will be Jesus' true hour (cf. Jn 2:4; 13:1). When the disciples flee, Mary will remain beneath the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25-27); later, at the hour of Pentecost, it will be they who gather around her as they wait for the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14). — Pope Benedict XVI

It was a challenge for me to play somebody who was so quiet and receding and depressed because she's also on screen all the time, and she has to remain compelling and entertaining. I was really nervous that people were not going to stay with me while I was just staying behind that bloody
counter. — Claire Danes

Someday, I will be brave enough to say these things to you in person. For now, I remain in happy, quiet contemplation over you and can say tonight that I just might love you. Or could someday. — Erin McCahan

In a quiet place, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and go inward. Place your attention on your heart, in the center of your chest. Sit quietly and easily let your attention remain there. — Deepak Chopra

Remaining quiet is what is called wisdom-insight. To remain quiet is to resolve the mind in the Self. Telepathy, knowing past, present and future happenings and clairvoyance do not constitute wisdom-insight. — Ramana Maharshi

I don't tell my mother what happened the night before. I'm too embarrassed to tell her that I allowed that fat nasty man to stick his tongue in my mouth. A small part of me is afraid to tell her the truth. What if she doesn't do anything with the information? She isn't protecting me from Billy Dean so why would I think she would call the police on Big Ray? It's easier to remain quiet and optimistic and think that if I had told her then maybe she would have become enraged and driven to his house and cracked him over the head with that blaring television set. Although I can't imagine my mother capable of that level of passion, part — Marlayna Glynn

Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent. — Napoleon Hill

After so many years of fighting to pour herself into skintight, low-rise jeans and binding pencil skirts and slacks that always felt like a vise around her waist, she found leggings were God's apology to women everywhere. For the first time, something that was in style actually flattered her figure perfectly by hiding her less-than-stellar mid- and rear section while accentuating her reasonably shapely legs. Every day she pulled a pair on she offered a silent thank-you to their inventor and a quiet prayer that they'd remain in fashion just a little bit longer. — Lauren Weisberger

For these reasons they should not hesitate to exchange peace for war. If wise men remain quiet, while they are not injured, brave men abandon peace for war when they are injured, returning to an understanding on a favourable opportunity: in fact, they are neither intoxicated by their success in war, nor disposed to take an injury for the sake of the delightful tranquility of peace. Indeed, to falter for the sake of such delights is, if you remain inactive, the quickest way of losing the sweets of repose to which you cling; while to conceive extravagant pretensions from success in war is to forget how hollow is the confidence by which you are elated. — Thucydides

It's very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it that every one bears some mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I'm rather stout, but if I must tell you the truth I've been
shockingly chipped and cracked. I do very well for service yet, because I've been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard - the quiet, dusky cupboard where there's an odour of stale spices - as much as I can. But
when I've to come out and into a strong light - then, my dear, I'm a horror! — Henry James

The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. — Thomas Jefferson

I remain quiet. I am determined to close myself to the world, to tighten my heart and hold what has not yet been stolen from me. I cannot let myself slip away. I will hold what I am inside, and keep my hands tight around all the things I have seen and heard, and felt. — Hannah Kent

if one day you feel like crying...
call me
I don't promise that
I will make you laugh

But I can cry with you.

If one day you want to run away
Don't be afraid to call me.
I don't promise to ask you to stop,

But I can run with you.

If one day you don't want to listen to anyone
call me
i promise to be there for you
but i also promise to remain quiet

But...
If one day you call
and there is no answer...
come fast to see me..

Perhaps I need you. — Robert J. Lavery

Jury trials are really nothing more than poorly written stage plays. You've got two authors writing opposing narratives and a director who is paid not to care about either outcome. Hired actors sit on either end of the stage, while unwitting audience members strive to remain quiet. No applause should be rendered, no gasps of glory. Witnesses sit agape with fury as they stumble across their rehearsed lines. If only they had practiced just once more. If only they had more time or a dress rehearsal, then they would recite their packaged words with such eloquent delivery that the critics in the jury box would believe only them. — Elizabeth L. Silver

Don't let us quarrel. We all have our weaknesses, dear friends; so we must strive to be considerate of one another. And since this poor boy is hungry and has nothing whatver to eat, let us all remain quiet and allow him to sleep; for it is said that in sleep a mortal may forget even hunger. - Scarecrow — L. Frank Baum

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

It is an experiment worth trying to be alone and to be quiet for a brief period every day. Under city conditions it may be difficult to carry out, but most of us could do it if we tried. At any rate, we should moderate the pace at which we are living. If we remain at high gear, at top pressure, we are bound to suffer from fatigue and strain. — Robert McCracken

Singing is my pleasure, but not in church, for the parson said the gargoyles must remain on the outside, not seek room in the choir stalls. So I sing inside the mountain of my flesh, and my voice is as slender as a reed and my voice has no lard in it. When I sing the dogs sit quiet and people who pass in the night stop their jabbering and discontent and think of other times, when they were happy. And I sing of other times, when I was happy, though I know that these are figments of my mind and nowhere I have been. But does it matter if the place cannot be mapped as long as I can still describe it? — Jeanette Winterson