Silence Is Also Quotes & Sayings

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history. — Octavio Paz

God, for me, is more of a feeling, a feeling of peace. I think my god lives in a silence that exists inside me. It's such a delicious fucking silence, so profound. But this can also get tricky, because if I'm feeling crazy then I'm like, Where the hell is god? Has god abandoned me? Like, no peace, no god. But it's still better than some bro deity telling me I'm a piece of shit. — Melissa Broder

And to forget one's own sharp absurd little personality, reputation and the rest of it, one should read; see outsiders; think more; write more logically; above all be full of work; and practise anonymity. Silence in company; or the quietest statement, not the showiest; is also "medicated" as the doctors say. It was an empty party, rather, last night. Very nice here, though. — Virginia Woolf

The study of silence has long engrossed me. The matrix of a poet's work consists not only of what is there to be absorbed and worked on, but also of what is missing, desaparecido, rendered unspeakable, thus unthinkable. It is through these invisible holes in reality that poetry makes its way - certainly for women and other marginalized subjects and for disempowered and colonized peoples generally, but ultimately for all who practice any art at its deeper levels. The impulse to create begins - often terribly and fearfully - in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken? — Adrienne Rich

What would you here, unhappy mortal, and for what cause have you left your own land to enter this, which is forbidden to such as you? Can you show reason why my power should not be laid on you in heavy punishment for your insolence and folly?" Then Beren looking up beheld the eyes of Luthien, and his glance went also to the face of Melian; and it seemed to him that words were put into his mouth. Fear left him, and the pride of the eldest house of Men returned to him; and he said: "My fate, O King, led me hither, through perils such as few even of the Elves would dare. And here I have found what I sought not indeed, but finding I would possess for ever. For it is above all gold and silver, and beyond all jewels. Neither rock, nor steel, nor the fires of Morgoth, nor all the powers of the Elf-kingdoms, shall keep from me the treasure that I desire. For Luthien your daughter is the fairest of all the Children of the World." Then silence fell upon the hall ... — J.R.R. Tolkien

Silence, yes, but what silence! For it is all very fine to keep silence, but one has also to consider the kind of silence one keeps. — Samuel Beckett

Solitude, at first is scary. All you have is yourself. After a while its comforting, it knows the real you and cant judge you for it. If you live it long enough it becomes an addiction, like all things, too much of it and you will go insane but not enough of it will also send you there.n — Nikki Rowe

Human rights are universal and indivisible. Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. This is why we cannot remain silent in the face of evil or violence; silence merely encourages them. — Vaclav Havel

I let quiet shape what I say, then realize there is nothing that can be fully said - the reason for gestures and eyes and art. Always something waiting, wanting, expectant, yet also curiously not. — Meia Geddes

The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a pitch of concentration by the interactions of the office. Now there are only silence and the flashing of the unset clock on the microwave. He feels as if he had been playing a computer game which remorselessly tested his reflexes, only to have its plug suddenly pulled from the wall. He is impatient and restless, but simultaneously exhausted and fragile. He is in no state to engage with anything significant. It is of course impossible to read, for a sincere book would demand not only time, but also a clear emotional lawn around the text in which associations and anxieties could emerge and be disentangled. He will perhaps only ever do one thing well in his life.
For this particular combination of tiredness and nervous energy, the sole workable solution is wine. Office civilisation could not be feasible without the hard take-offs and landings effected by coffee and alcohol. — Alain De Botton

People have become afraid of love because in love also, death penetrates. If two lovers are sitting side by side in deep love and intimacy, not even talking ... Talking is an escape, an escape from love. When two lovers are talking that simply shows they are avoiding the intimacy. Words in-between give distance - with no words distance disappears, death appears. In silence there is death just lurking around - a beautiful phenomenon. But people are so afraid that they go on talking whether it is needed or not. They go on talking about anything, everything - but they cannot keep silent. — Rajneesh

Silence is not only never thirsty, but also never brings pain or sorrow. — Hippocrates

I love everything that makes up a milieu, the rolling of the carriages and the noise of the workmen in Paris, the cries of a thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships on the waters. I love also absolute, profound silence, and, in short, I love everything that is around me, no matter where I am. — George Sand

Today there is a pleasant very light haze over the whole sky, and the sea has a misleadingly docile silvered look, as if the substantial wavelets were determined to stroke the rocks as hard as they could without showing any trace of foam. It is a compact radiant complacent sort of sea, very beautiful. There ought to be seals, the waves themselves are almost seals today, but still I scan the water in vain with my long-distance glasses. Enormous yellow-beaked gulls perch on the rocks and stare at me with brilliant glass eyes. A shadow-cormorant skims the glycerine sea. The rocks are thronged with butterflies. The temperature remains high. I wash my clothes and dry them on the lawn. I have been swimming every day
and feel very fit and salty. Still no move from Lizzie, but I am not worried. I feel happy in my silence. If the gods have some treat in store for Lizzie and me, good. If not, also good. I feel innocent and free. Perhaps it is all that swimming. — Iris Murdoch

SPRING Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question: how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting; all day I think of her - her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love. — Mary Oliver

The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Silence is the demon's trap, and the more one is silenced, the more terrible the demon; but silence is also the divinity's mutual understanding with the single individual. — Soren Kierkegaard

But there was something more precious than his poems; something far away he didn't yet possess and longed for - manliness; he knew that it could only be attained by action and courage; and if courage meant courage to be rejected, rejected by everything, by the beloved woman, by the painter, and even by his own poems - so be it: he wanted to have that courage. And so he said:
"Yes, I know that the revolution has no need for my poems. I regret that, because I like them. But unfortunately my regret is no argument against their useless-ness.
Again there was silence, and then one of the men said: "This is dreadful," and he actually shuddered as if a chill had run down his spine. Jaromil felt the horror his words had produced in everyone there, that they were seeing in him the living disappearance of everything they loved, everything that made life worthwhile.
It was sad but also beautiful: within the space of an instant, Jaromil lost the feeling of being a child. — Milan Kundera

If it is language that makes us human, one half of language is to listen. Silence can exist without speech, but speech cannot live without silence. Listen to the speech of others. Listen even more to their silence. To pray is to listen to the revelations of nature, to the meaning of events. To listen to music is to listen also to silence, and to find the stillness deepened and enriched. — Jacob Trapp

Just then Marc rolls on to his side, faces me and his voice breaks the silence.
"How is it that you have never found happiness?"
Feeling him move a stray strand of hair away from my mouth I reply truthfully.
"I thought I had at the time. I married for all of the right reasons and believed in the vows we exchanged. Unfortunately happiness got lost along the way through the actions of others; I also lost trust with it. — A.J. Walters

Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything . . . It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. Silence can be lost and also recovered. But silence cannot be imagined, although most people think so. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it. — Gordon Hempton

I love my friends and family, but I also love it when they can't find me and I can spend all day reading or walking all alone, in silence, eight thousand miles away from everyone. All alone and unreachable in a foreign country is one my most favorite possible things to be. — Elizabeth Gilbert

One of the things I've always enjoyed is moving around and staying fit. Physicality is such a big part of being an actor, but it's also about stillness and silence. — Joel Edgerton

I love silence. And one of the paradoxes about the way I live and also about my work is that definitely one of the reasons I went into music, and especially into composing is that I love setting up an environment where I can be by myself for long periods of time and have everything as quiet as possible, either to think about sound, or to think about ideas, or just to focus on things that are important to me. — Tod Machover

There, at a depth to which divers would find it difficult to descend, are caverns, haunts, and dusky mazes, where monstrous creatures multiply and destroy each other. Huge crabs devour fish and are devoured in their turn. Hideous shapes of living things, not created to be seen by human eyes wander in this twilight. Vague forms of antennae, tentacles, fins, open jaws, scales, and claws, float about there, quivering, growing larger, or decomposing and perishing in the gloom, while horrible swarms of swimming things prowl about seeking their prey.
To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts. — Victor Hugo

With comedy, it's a combination of knowing the comedic beat was good - it made you laugh, it made people on the crew laugh. With drama, you do something deep and if your stuff was really effective, the ultimate result is silence. Silence is not necessarily ... that would also be the result if you sucked. — Chris Pratt

It is like the oak that hardens itself and bears up against the storm. It is weather-beaten and scarred and confident like a sea-captain. Also it straineth like a hound in the leash. It hath pride and great subtlety. Yea, and glee also! Let the Magus act thus in his conjuration. Let him sit and conjure; let him draw himself together in that forcefulness; let him rise next swollen and straining; let him dash back the hood from his head and fix his basilisk eye upon the sigil of the demon. Then let him sway the force of him to and fro like a satyr in silence, until the Word burst from his throat. — Anonymous

Healing is not only a specific method, healing is also to invite another person into our own inner light, to invite another person into our presence, love, joy, acceptance, humor, understanding, playfulness, meditation and silence. Healing can also be a loving word, an understanding glance, a present touch, a silent listening or simply joking with another person and making him or her happy. Humor is also one of the strongest healing powers to see our situation and ourselves in a new and creative light. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Say I Am You
I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff.
Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of a stone, a flickering in metal.
Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,
and the falling away. What is, and what isn't.
You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all,
say who I am. Say I am You. — Rumi

The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling; a beauty different from the beauty of landscape and the cold perfect form. This is a beauty that has suffered its way through the ache of desolation until the words or music emerged to equal the hunger and desperation at its heart. It must also be said that not all woundedness succeeds in finding its way through to beauty of form. Most woundedness remains hidden, lost inside forgotten silence. Indeed, in every life there is some wound that continues to weep secretly, even after years of attempted healing. Where woundedness can be refined into beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place. — John O'Donohue

The work that stirs the greatest passion is also the work that creates around it the greatest silence, the strongest imperative to stand back and admire and let others admire, without interfering. — George Saunders

When I think of antiquity, the detail that frightens me is that those hundreds of millions of slaves on whose backs civilization rested generation after generation have left behind them no record whatever. We do not even know their names. In the whole of Greek and Roman history, how many slaves' names are known to you? I can think of two, or possibly three. One is Spartacus and the other is Epictetus. Also, in the Roman room at the British Museum there is a glass jar with the maker's name inscribed on the bottom, 'FELIX FECIT'. I have a mental picture of poor Felix (a Gaul with red hair and a metal collar round his neck), but in fact he may not have been a slave; so there are only two slaves whose names I definitely know, and probably few people can remember more. The rest have gone down into utter silence. — George Orwell

Spirituality is a harmonious blend of outer silence and inner celebration; and also inner silence and outer celebration! — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

It is easy for desire to be caught like a bird in a net, its wings fouled and twisted, no longer free to cross back and forth between silence and word. Desire may also find itself so amputated by tradition and community that it wanders in a void with nothing to orient it, to shape or discipline it. Desire must find ways to navigate its bitter and sweet paradox: it moves toward but also always through and beyond every object. — Wendy Farley

My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silence and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated. — Edward W. Said

One way to access the field is through the daily practice of silence, meditation, and non-judgment. Spending time in nature will also give you access to the qualities inherent in the field: infinite creativity, freedom, and bliss. — Deepak Chopra

A second later, there was a knock on my door and a booming voice. 'Alexandria?'
Seth stilled above me, panting. 'You have got to be freaking kidding me.'
Leon knocked again. [ ... ] 'Lucian is requesting your presence immediately.' Another gap of silence followed. 'He is also requesting to see you, Seth.'
Seth frowned as the gleam in his eyes faded. 'How in the world does he know I'm in here?'
'Leon ... just knows.' I pushed at him weakly. 'Get off.'
'I was trying to. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Make peace with silence, and remind yourself that it is in this space that you'll come to remember your spirit. When you're able to transcend an aversion to silence, you'll also transcend many other miseries. And it is in this silence that the remembrance of God will be activated. — Wayne W. Dyer

The first thing you discover is a kind of emptiness, a silence, a presence which doesn't seem to have content to it, like looking up at a limitless sky. That boundary-less place inside you is your own consciousness, your awareness. When you relax into it, you realize that it's also full - it is everything. You realize this presence is what you really are: Love. — Arjuna Ardagh

But despite its shared nature, language is also dangerous, a potentially isolating enterprise. Not all players are equal. In fact, Wittgenstein was by no means always a successful participant himself, frequently experiencing extreme difficulty in communication and expression. In an essay on fear and public language, the critic Rei Terada describes a scene repeated throughout Wittgenstein's life, in which he would begin to stammer while attempting to address a group of colleagues. Eventually, his stuttering would give way to a tense silence, during which he would struggle mutely with his thoughts, gesticulating all the while with his hands, as if he was still speaking audibly. — Olivia Laing

As long as we speak only in response to other people's disapproving silence, and as long as our words are but an apology, we ourselves are unable to judge the world fairly. Our life is an enigma to others, but their lives are an enigma to us, and our attempts to communicate with them are futile: we see them always as an audience, and in their eyes we are actors. No mind or character can withstand such false relations. They affect not only our behaviour but also our most intimate feelings. — Astolphe De Custine

Lying is done with words, and also with silence. — Adrienne Rich

When you cannot hold the body still, you cannot hold the brain still. If you do not know the silence of the body, you cannot understand the silence of the mind. Action and silence have to go together. If there is action, there must also be silence. If there is silence, there can be conscious action and not just motion. — B.K.S. Iyengar

He'd been thinking about the quality of sunshine, that is, how daylight wipes away the stars and the planets, making them invisible to human eyes. If one needed the darkness in order to see the heavens, might daylight be a form of blindness? Could it be that sound was also a form of deafness? If so, what was silence? — Madeleine Thien

Kind of prayer we here speak of as properly "monastic" (though it may also fit into the life of any lay person who is attracted to it) is a prayer of silence, simplicity, contemplative and meditative unity, a deep personal integration in an attentive, watchful listening of "the heart. — Thomas Merton

This withdrawal from the day's turmoil into creative silence is not a luxury, a fad, or a futility. It is a necessity, because it tries to provide the conditions wherein we are able to yield ourselves to intuitive leadings, promptings, warnings, teachings, and counsels and also to the inspiring peace of the soul. It dissolves mental tensions and heals negative emotions. — Paul Brunton

MYTH373. | Paul Revere rode through the night to warn the colonists that, "the British are coming!" What really happened is that Revere rode in silence to avoid army patrols while spreading the word to key people. He also used the warning, "the regulars are coming out," as opposed to "the British" since many colonists were still loyal to the crown. — John Brown

It is also true that memory sometimes comes to him as a voice. It is a voice that speaks inside him, and it is not necessarily his own. It speaks to him in the way a voice might tell stories to a child, and yet at times this voice makes fun of him, or calls him to attention, or curses him in no uncertain terms. At times it willfully distorts the story it is telling him, changing the facts to suit its whims, catering to the interests of drama rather than truth. Then he must speak to it in his own voice and tell it to stop, thus returning it to the silence it came from. At other times it sings to him. At still other times it whispers. And then there are the times it merely hums, or babbles, or cries out in pain. And even when it says nothing, he knows it is still there, and in the silence of this voice that says nothing, he waits for it to speak. — Paul Auster

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, 'Prove that you are a good person.' Another voice says, 'You'd better be ashamed of yourself.' There also is a voice that says, 'Nobody really cares about you,' and one that says, 'Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.' But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, 'You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.' That's the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.
That's what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us 'my Beloved'. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Our theory of disaster, of sorrow, of affliction, borrowed from the poets and novelist, is that it is incessant; but every passage in our own lives and in the lives of others, so far as we have witnessed them, teaches us that this is false. The house of mourning is decorously darkened to the world, but within itself it is also the house of laughing. Burst of gaiety, as heartfelt as its grief, relieve the gloom, and the stricken survivors have their jest together, in which the thought of the dead is tenderly involved, and a fond sense, not crazier than many others, of sympathy and enjoyment beyond the silence, justifies the sunnier mood before sorrow rushes back, deploring and despairing, and make it all up again with the conventional fitness of things. — William Dean Howells

It is the silence that frightens me so in the evenings and at night ... I can't tell you how oppressive it is never to be able to go outdoors, also I am very afraid that we will be discovered and be shot. — Anne Frank

Universal violence compels the language to be mute ... Silence is not only a metaphor of Hemingway's work; it is also the source of its formal excellence, its integrity. — Ihab Hassan

Whatever you may have to do, watch your mind. Also you must have moments of complete inner peace and quiet, when your mind is absolutely still. If you miss it, you miss the entire thing. If you do not, the silence of the mind will dissolve and absorb all else. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Usually, I set one foot in a library and I feel my own internal volume lower. A library is a physical equivalent of a sigh. It's the silence, sure, but it's also the certainty of all those books, the way they stand side by side with their still, calm conviction. It's the reassurance of knowledge in the face of confusion. — Deb Caletti

SHE RESEARCHED WHEN everyone slept. In the dead silence, her mind worked with more clarity. No interruptions, no worries. Sometimes she even imagined that her ancestors guided her. That they reached out from the past to share their stories.
"Hocus Pocus!" she thought, smiling. Her inside joke was a source of inspiration.
But her imagination was not far-fetched.
My second cousin, twice removed, is a family historian. She is also a lawyer. And this is why I chose her. I needed her to do me a favor. I chose her, although she is a business lawyer and not a criminal lawyer. That was fine by me. It's not like my lawyers did a superb job at defending me. I was wrongfully executed. — Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

What could she do, bound as she was by the tyranny of silence? She dared not explain the girl to herself ... that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort. The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that seeing nothing it might avoid Truth ... if silence is golden it is also in this case, very expedient. — Radclyffe Hall

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear. — George Eliot

If your mind has space, then in that space there is silence - and from that silence everything else comes, for then you can listen, you can pay attention without resistance. That is why it is very important to have space in the mind. If the mind is not overcrowded, not ceaselessly occupied, then it can listen to that dog barking, to the sound of a train crossing the distant bridge, and also be fully aware of what is being said by a person talking here. Then the mind is a living thing, it is not dead. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, MY HEART!
For heaven's sake, my heart, keep secret your love, and hide the secret from those you see and you will have better fortune.
He who reveals secrets is considered a fool; silence and secrecy are much better for him who falls in love.
For heaven's sake, my heart, if someone asks, "What has happened?", do not answer.
If you are asked, "Who is she?";
Say she is in love with another
And pretend that it is of no consequence.
For heaven's sake, my love, conceal your passion; your sickness is also your medicine because love to the soul is as wine in a glass - what you see is liquid, what is hidden is its spirit.
For heaven's sake, my heart, conceal your troubles; then, should the seas roar and the skies fall, you will be safe. — Kahlil Gibran

Women in the online gaming community have been harassed, threatened, and driven out. Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic who documented such incidents, received support for her work, but also, in the words of a journalist, 'another wave of really aggressive, you know, violent personal threats, her accounts attempted to be hacked. And one man in Ontario took the step of making an online video game where you could punch Anita's image on the screen. And if you punched it multiple times, bruises and cuts would appear on her image.' The difference between these online gamers and the Taliban men who, last October, tried to murder fourteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out about the right of Pakistani women to education is one of degree. Both are trying to silence and punish women for claiming voice, power, and the right to participate. Welcome to Manistan. — Rebecca Solnit

The elders say- difficult to prove- that winged creatures also dream. The birds are lovers of heights, always searching out landing spots, never constant here at the foot of the human race. 'It's that they discovered a magical advantage ... ' they say, 'the sound of silence.'
At the foot of the clouds the raindrops come earlier, it's true, and the silence of the sky is something unattainable for those who don't fly- we have never experimented. The dream of the birds was that man of them headed for a land where they experienced a similar magic to that lived by them.
In the final analysis, music is the only human sound similar to that of silence. — Ondjaki

Good writing arises out of obsession. With obsession there is emotional depth and a certain weight and gravity to the language and story. Without obsession I would be empty, and, literally, I wonder if I would even have any substance. The body is like a cathedral, and the cathedral needs music and prayer filling its grand spaces. Obsession turning over and over within the body creates music, prayer, substance that, although providing the depth, weight, and gravity I first evoked, also allows for lyricism, lightness, and flight up into the various arches and ellipses of the cathedral. Obsession is filled with slowness - and so obsession in my writing, for good or bad, doesn't come about because of an immediate intellectual idea or problem, nor a quick flash of inspiration. There's this slow energy at work, and I begin to become a part of that when I'm very close to silence. — Fred Arroyo

Technology has altered the way music sounds, how it's composed and how we experience it. It has also flooded the world with music. The world is awash with (mostly) recorded sounds. We used to have to pay for music or make it ourselves; playing, hearing and experiencing it was exceptional, a rare and special experience. Now hearing it is ubiquitous, and silence is the rarity that we pay for and savor. — David Byrne

Students who excel in active listening also contribute much to the formation of community. This is also true of students who may not speak often but when they speak (sometimes only when reading required writing) the significance of what they have to say far exceeds those of other students who may always openly discuss ideas. And of course there are times when an active silence, one that includes pausing to think before one speaks, adds much to classroom dynamics. — Bell Hooks

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion. — George Eliot

Just as the day cannot exist without the night, just as life cannot exist without death, creativity cannot exist without silence. And vice versa is also true: silence cannot exist without creativity. — Rajneesh

We also have a responsibility not to let ourselves be judged. We do not have to accept others' evaluations of our worth, nor are we obligated to believe in their superiority. Whichever role we are assigned, we can stop the game by refusing to play our expected part. When someone suggests that our recent behavior has undone our right to exist, a useful question to ask is, "What do you want? What can I do to make the situation better?" This often reduces the Judge's voice to silence, because what the Judge really wants- but cannot admit- is to make you feel bad, not to get the floor clean. When we feel secure in our inherent value, we do not have to argue about our worth as human beings. Instead, we can attempt to solve the problem. — Starhawk

The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext. — Thomas Sankara

The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated
faces, this way and that way, drugs me into dreams; rubs the
features from faces. People might walk through me. And what is
this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found
myself caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar - forest trees or
the roar of wild beasts. Time has whizzed back an inch or two on its reel;
our short progress has been cancelled. I think also that our bodies are in truth
naked. We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these
pavements are shells, bones and silence. — Virginia Woolf

Then there are also the quiet deaths. How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba? Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child, between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust. Feel the mature fondness for who you once were, and your current need to protect innocence wherever you make might find it. The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is a most serious death, and yet it is necessary for the onset of maturity.

What about the day we began working not for ourselves, but rather with the hope that our kids have a better life? Or the day we realize that, on the whole, adult life is deeply repetitive? As our lives roll into the ordinary, when our ideals sputter and dissipate, as we wash the dishes after yet another meal, we are integrating death, a little part of us is dying so that another part can live. — Matthew Sanford

Solitude well practiced will break the power of busyness, haste, isolation, and loneliness. You will see that the world is not on your shoulders after all. Your will find yourself, and God will find you in new ways. Silence also brings Sabbath to you. It completes solitude, for without it you cannot be alone. Far from being a mere absence, silence allows the reality of God to stand in the midst of your life. God does not ordinarily compete for our attention. In silence we come to attend. Lastly, fasting is done that we many consciously experience the direct sustenance of God to our body and our whole person. — Dallas Willard

In the greatest art, one is always aware of things that cannot be said ... of the contradiction between expression and the presence of the inexpressible. Stylistic devices are also techniques of avoidance. The most potent elements of a work of art are, often, its silences. — Susan Sontag

The great danger in the South comes precisely from the fact that the public is not informed. Newspapers shirk notoriously their editorial responsibilities and print what they think their readers want. They lean with the prevailing winds and employ every fallacy of logic in order to editorialize harmoniously with popular prejudices. They also keep a close eye on possible economic reprisals from the Councils and the Klans, plus other superpatriotic groups who bring pressure to bear on the newspapers' advertisers. In addition, most adhere to the long-standing conspiracy of silence about anything remotely favorable to the Negro. His achievements are carefully excluded or, when they demand attention, are handled with the greatest care to avoid the impression that anything good the individual Negro does is typical of his race. — John Howard Griffin

With others, I feel betrayed that those who had the authority in the Church to stop Brendan Smyth failed to act on the evidence I gave them. However, I also accept that I was part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society and the Church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past. — Sean Brady

I also like to take my glasses off and look at people. The faces around me, all of them, seem kind and pretty and smiling. What's more, when my glasses are off, I don't ever think about arguing with anyone at all, nor do I feel the need to make snide remarks. All I do is just blankly stare in silence. — Osamu Dazai

Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding," Joseph exclaimed. "If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?"
The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: "There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun. — Hermann Hesse

To write," Marguerite Duras remarked, "is also not to speak. It is to keep silent. It is to howl noiselessly. — Terry Tempest Williams

You should leave your wife more time." "She has all day available." "I'm not kidding. If you don't, you're guilty not only on a human level but also on a political one." "What's the crime?" "The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women's intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn't realize it." I waited in silence for Pietro to respond. My husband reacted with sarcasm. "Elena can cultivate her intelligence when and how she likes, the essential thing is that she not take time from me." "If she doesn't take it from you, then who can she take it from?" Pietro frowned. "When the task we give ourselves has the urgency of passion, there's nothing that can keep us from completing it." I felt wounded, I whispered with a false smile: "My husband is saying that I have no true interest. — Elena Ferrante

Be that your cousin has influenced you in some way - but as for our Junior Surgeon," he turned to Carausius, "I remember that when first he was posted here, you yourself, Caesar, were not too sure of his good faith. This is surely some plot of Maximian's, to cast doubt and suspicion between the Emperor of Britain and the man who, however unworthily, serves him to the best of his ability as chief minister." Justin stepped forward, his hands clenched at his sides. "That is a foul lie," he said, for once without a trace of his stutter. "And you know it, Allectus; none better." "Will you grant me also a space to speak?" Carausius said quietly, and silence fell like a blight on the lamplit chamber. He looked round at all three of them, taking his time. "I remember my doubts, Allectus. I remember also that the — Rosemary Sutcliff

Silence is the language of God; it is also the language of the heart. — Sivananda

Silence is also a form of speaking. — Herta Muller

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts. — Thomas Carlyle

Before I met No I thought that violence meant shouting and hitting and war and blood. Now I know that there can also be violence in silence and that it's sometimes invisible to the naked eye. There's violence in the time that conceals wounds, the relentless succession of days, the impossibility of turning back the clock. Violence is what escapes us. It's silent and hidden. Violence is what remains inexplicable, what stays forever opaque ...
My mother stands there at the living room door with her arms by her sides. And I think that there's violence in that too - in her inability to reach out to me, to make the gesture which is impossible and so forever suspended. — Delphine De Vigan

At an early age I found myself facing the incomprehensible, the unthinkable, death. Ever since, I have known nothing on this earth can be shared because we own nothing. There is a word inside us stronger than all others - and more personal. A word of solitude and certainty, so buried in its night that it is barely audible to itself. A word of refusal, but also of absolute commitment, forging its bonds of silence in the emfathomable silence of the bond.
This word cannot be shared. Only sacrificed. — Edmond Jabes

One who is seeking a live balance, a live silence, would like to move to both the market and the Himalayas. He would like to go to the market to enjoy noise, and he would also like to go to the Himalayas to enjoy silence. And — Osho

The tension to mother the "right" way can leave a peculiar silence within mother daughter relationships
the silence of a mother'sown truth and experience. Within this silence, a daughter's authentic voice can also fall silent. This is the silence of perfection. This silence of perfection prevents mothers from listening and learning from their daughters. — Elizabeth Debold

In some cases, people are silent; they're being complacent. But we're also seeing people speak out against some of these raids, these arrests. So for example, the Townhouse Gallery - the outreach director gave an interview to Ahram Online, which is a semi-official news agency here. And he sort of dismissed it, played it down. But the publisher from the publishing house - the Merit Publishing House, which was raided - he said this won't scare us; we will continue to dream of a free country, a country with social justice, and this won't silence us. — Leila Fadel

Also, the silence is always there. The silence doesn't go away. — Melissa Broder

As she is the senior person in the room, I wait for her to call on me. And, while I am waiting, I should show I am a good listener by keeping both my voice and my body quiet. In China, we often feel Westerners speak up so much in meetings that they do this to show off, or they are poor listeners. Also, I have noticed that Chinese people leave a few more seconds of silence before jumping in than in the West. You Westerners practically speak on top of each other in a meeting. — Erin Meyer

P15 - Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system to the degree that this happens, we are also becoming submerged in a new "Culture of Silence". — Paulo Freire

Silence is also conversation. — Ramana Maharshi

Um. Charles thinks that his wolf has chosen me as his mate."
"In less than one full day?" It did sound dumb when he said it that way.
"Yes." She couldn't keep the uncertainty out of her voice, though, and it bothered Charles. He rolled to his feet and growled softly.
"Charles also said I was an Omega wolf," she told his father. "That might have something to do with it as well."
Silence lengthened and she began to think that the cell phone might have dropped the connection. Then the Marrok laughed softly. "Oh his brother is going to tease him unmercifully about this. — Patricia Briggs

In this silence of the white Host, carried in the Monstrance, are all His words; there is His whole life given in offering to the Father for each of us; there is also the glory of the glorified body, which started with the Resurrection, and still continues in Heavenly union. — Pope John Paul II

The issue regarding the soul's relation to the state is posed with great force by Plato but also by More, not only in his fictional Utopia but also in later life when the issue would arise in a dramatically personal way because he found that neither laws nor rhetorical speech could save him from execution for a silence that he insisted was required by his soul.6 — Gerard B. Wegemer

There are for starters, grandeur and silence, pure water and clean air. There is also the gift of distance ... the chance to stand away from relationships and daily ritual ... and the gift of energy. Wilderness infuses us with its own special brand of energy. — Linn Thomas

The end occurred mostly in her whispers and his silence - because he couldn't whisper and they didn't want to wake Colin's parents. They succeeded in staying quiet, in part because it felt like the air had been shocked out of him. Paradoxically, he felt as if his getting dumped was the only thing happening on the entire dark and silent planet, and also as if it weren't happening at all. He felt himself drifting away from the one-sided whispered conversation, wondering if maybe everything big and heartbreaking and incomprehensible is a paradox. — John Green

Customary interruptions are not only gratifying and cheering, but they are also really necessary in order to gain breath and voice to carry one on through some violent exertions; though after all it must be confessed that silence is the most flattering applause an Actor can receive. — Sarah Siddons

First things first, my silence last night had nothing to do with you, but also had everything to do with you. You were not good last night, Lily, and I'm not the kind of guy that's filled with sweet words." Shaking his head, he adds, "That's not me."
I'm trying to undertand where this is going so I simply nod.
He nods, too. "But I get you. And I know that nothing I said last night would've helped. So I shut my trap, knowing that whatever I could've said would've only made things worse. That wasn't something we needed. So, rather than using words, I showed you how I could take care of you. So now you know. We can go from there." His face softens as he says, "You didn't ruin anything, baby. Got to taste you in every way, take care of you, and hold you all night. That's not bad."
Shaking his head slowly, he utters, "That's fucking phenomenal. — Belle Aurora

The world needs them - the ones who absorb the emotions of others, which diminishes their pain and disquietude and the world also uses them as a repository for confessions, secrets, grudges and indignation. They will leave these uncommon and intuitive individuals feeling unburdened themselves while the unusual individual will be weighed down by having taken on those burdens in addition to their own. The world needs them but what they need is something as aberrant as themselves, and that is silence, stillness and rest. — Donna Lynn Hope

My sister is also retarded. Across the board. She's a one hundred per cent, honest to goodness, born that way retard. I learned a long time ago that if you're going to tell a story about your retarded sister, you need to mention she's retarded right off the bat or inevitably, at the end of the story, someone will say, What ... is she, retarded? And then you have to go, Uh ... yeah, she is. Followed by a lengthy, awkward silence. — Bonnie McFarlane