Silent Listen Quotes & Sayings

The trees all whisper, leaves gossiping. The stones are heavy thinkers, the sullen silent types. He used to make up stories for everything in nature, giving it all voices, lives. If the moor wind ever sings, you mustn't listen, not with all of your ears. Use only the edges. Listen the way you'd look out the corners of your eyes. The wind is lonely, love, and always looking for company. — Victoria Schwab

The real "work" of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
To gently push aside and silence the many voices that question my goodness and to trust that I will hear the voice of blessing
that demands real effort. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

And when she thinks of that generation of silent men, the boys who lived through the Depression and grew up to become soldiers or not-soldiers in the war, she doesn't blame them for refusing to talk, for not wanting to go back into the past, but how curious it is, she thinks, how sublimely incoherent that her generation, which doesn't have much of anything to talk about yet, has produced men who never stop talking, men like Bing, for example, or men like Jake, who talks about himself at the slightest prompting, who has an opinion on every subject, who spews forth words from morning to night, but just because he talks, that doesn't mean she wants to listen to him, whereas with the silent men, the old men, the ones who are nearly gone now, she would give anything to hear what they have to say. — Paul Auster

Listen much, keep silent when in doubt, and always take heed of the tongue; thou wilt make few mistakes. See much, beware of pitfalls, and always give heed to thy walk; thou wilt have little to rue. If thy words are seldom wrong, thy deeds leave little to rue, pay will follow. — Confucius

Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend. When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues. — Rumi

There is truth to be learned here, if you are patient enough to listen to it. — Cassandra Clare

The thing Tedros liked about girls is that they always started the conversation. Most of the time, his job was just to listen, ask questions, and try to understand what in God's name was going on in their complicated little heads. He rarely had any idea what girls were talking about or why they made everything so torturous in their logic, so playing the role of the strong, silent type usually gave him time to catch up. — Soman Chainani

Do broken pianos play broken songs? Do they have busted melodies for busted hearts? Is there a song living inside it that's waiting to get out? Her keys are shattered and her notes long since silent but I can still hear her song. Just listen, just listen. — Tyler Knott Gregson

Remember that, in any encounter, the only thing you can control is your own actions and reactions. You cannot dictate the actions of the other person, or in this case, the horse, but you can often send the right signals to get what you want. If you are often baffled by the reactions others have to you, it is probably because you are unaware of the silent signals you send through your posture, your facial gestures, your tone of voice, the amount of personal space you maintain, and so forth. Ever wondered why people don't listen when you try to assert yourself, or why people back away when you're trying to be friendly, or why you're never the one people seek out in a crowded room? Body language. Silent signals. Mixed signals. The trick is to focus outward, not inward. — Lisa Wingate

I wanted to be able to tell you the exact moment I fell in love with you. But I can't do that."
"You can't?" A pin could have dropped in the grass and it would have been heard in that moment as everyone grew perfectly silent to listen for his reply.
"No, I can't. Because every single moment I've spent with you is that moment, Lori. — Bella Andre

The event that will light the way for immigration in North America is the talking picture. The silent film brings nothing but entertainment - a pie in the face, a fop being dragged by a bear out of a department store - all events governed by fate and timing, not language and argument. The tramp never changes the opinion of the policeman. The truncheon swings, the tramp scuttles through a corner window and disturbs the fat lady's ablutions. These comedies are nightmares. The audience emits horrified laughter as Chaplin, blindfolded, rollerskates near the edge of the unbalconied mezzanine. No one shouts to warn him. He cannot talk or listen. North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency. — Michael Ondaatje

I am a shadow. I walk the wet roads under the dim light of the pale lamps, in the darkest hour of the cold dull nights.
I walk past the silent graveyard of the dead memories, towards the city of chaos plagued with gloom.
I do not exist, but in the eyes of the shattered souls. In the chapter of an old book. In the poem. In the smile of a wrecked and in the tear of a broken spirit.
Listen me in the songs told in the times long forgotten.
Search for me in the churchs and temples, bars and brothels,pitch black nights and the colorless days.
Dive down in your deepest part of your soul. And you will find my home.
I have many faces but I have no face of my own. I am a shadow. — Foaad Ahmad

If you ever find something worth singing for again", she said, a silent, fierce hope in her heart for his song, "I hope you will invite me to listen. — Nalini Singh

Let him tell them the truth. Before the Gospel is a word, it is silence. It is the silence of their own lives and of his life. It is life with the sound turned off so that for a moment or two you can experience it not in terms of the words you make it bearable by but for the unutterable mystery that it is. Let him say, "Be silent and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). Be silent and know that even by my silence and absence I am known. Be silent and listen to the stones cry out.
Out of the silence let the only real news comes, which is sad news before it is glad news and that is fairy tale last of all. — Frederick Buechner

In situations where I feel unclear or I do not know what to say or do, I turn my attention within myself. Then I listen to what my intuition and to what Existence within myself wants in this moment. Through listening within in this way, an answer often comes in the form of a creative and authentic impulse to say or do something or simply being silent until Existence is ready to respond. — Swami Dhyan Giten

If you ask Zen people they will say; tea is not something that you pour with unawareness and drink like any other drink. It is not a drink, it is meditation; it is prayer. So they listen to the kettle creating a melody, and in that listening they become more silent, more alert. — Rajneesh

Silence ought also to be the core of each concert. Remember the anagram: listen = silent. — Alfred Brendel

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. — Henry Miller

My soul spoke to me in a whisper, urgently and alarmingly: 'Words, words, do not make too many words. Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness, and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are all completely mired in madness?' "11 (2) Jung's soul: "There are hellish webs of words, only words . . . Be tentative with words, value them . . . for you are the first who gets snared in them. For words have meanings. With words you pull up the underworld. Word, the paltriest and the mightiest. In words the emptiness and the fullness flow together. Hence the word is an image of the God. — C. G. Jung

What was standing in my way was my own self-awareness. If I can begin this fasting of the heart, self-awareness will vanish. Then I will be free from limitation and preoccupation I Is that what you mean?" "Yes," said Confucius, "that's it! If you can do this, you will be able to go among men in their world without upsetting them. You will not enter into conflict with their ideal image of themselves. If they will listen, sing them a song. If not, keep silent. Don't try to break down their door. Don't try out new medicines on them. Just be there among them, because there is nothing else for you to be but one of them. Then you may have success! — Thomas Merton

It is interesting to note that the words silent and listen contain all of the same letters, just rearranged. — Suzanne Marsh

It will seem as if you were making the visions banal - but then you need to do that - then you are freed from the power of them Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book and turn over the pages and for you it will be your church - your cathedral - the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them - then you will lose your soul - for in that book is your soul. — Carl Jung

WHEN I GO ALONE AT NIGHT
WHEN I go alone at night to my love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind does not stir, the houses on both sides of the street stand silent.
It is my own anklets that grow loud at every step and I am ashamed.
When I sit on my balcony and listen for his footsteps, leaves do not rustle on the trees, and the water is still in the river like the sword on the knees of a sentry fallen asleep.
It is my own heart that beats wildly
I do not know how to quiet it.
When my love comes and sits by my side, when my body trembles and my eyelids droop, the night darkens, the wind blows out the lamp, and the clouds draw veils over the stars.
It is the jewel at my own breast that shines and gives light. I do not know how to hide it. — Rabindranath Tagore

Satan will always whisper don't care, be silent, you didn't do anything wrong, your better than them, your stronger than your enemies. However, a true daughter or son of God says back: I hurt so I will make it right. I was silent, but now I am ready to listen and share. I am not better because I know what I have done. I am not stronger than my enemies by hating them, but by healing them. — Shannon L. Alder

Time says hush: by the gong of time you live. Listen and you hear time saying you were silent long before you came to life and you will again be silent long after you leave it, why not be a little silent now? Hush yourself, noisy little man. Time hushes all: the gong of time rang for you to come out of the hush and you were born. The gong of time will ring for you to go back to the same hush you came from. Winners and losers, the weak and the strong, those who say little and try to say it well, and those who babble and prattle their lives away, time hushes all. — Carl Sandburg

The genius of the heart, that makes everything loud and complacent fall silent and learn to listen, that smoothes out rough souls and gives them the taste of a new desire - to lie still, like a mirror that the deep sky can mirror itself upon ... they are made richer in themselves, newer than before, broken open, sounded out by a thawing wind, perhaps less certain, more gentle, fragile, and broken, but full of hopes that do not have names yet, full of new wills and currents, of indignations and countercurrents ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

[Hades] returned his attention to the playlist while I eased the car back on the road. His fingers flipped deftly over the screen. 'Orpheus ... Dusk ... Orpheus ... Dusk ... do you have anything on here that doesn't make people want to jump off a cliff?'
... 'I'm driving. When you learn to drive something more modern than a horse and buggy, we can listen to your music.'
'I can drive!'
'Did they even have cars the last time you can to the surface?' I teased.
'Yes.'
'Not counting the minute and a half you spent rescuing me last year?'
Hades fell silent, and I laughed. 'I didn't think so. — Kaitlin Bevis

Be silent and listen to the song of your soul. — Debasish Mridha

In the depth of silence
be speechless
to listen the song of life,
song of creation of life,
primordial song.
Be silent, and listen to your heart.
Can you hear
The song of life,
The song of love,
The song of creation? — Debasish Mridha

What do you seek, so pensive and silent? What do you need, Camerado? Dear son! do you think it is love? Listen, dear son - listen, America, daughter or son! It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess - and yet it satisfies - it is great; But there is something else very great - it makes the whole coincide; It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all. — Walt Whitman

They let the silence stand then . . . not uneasily, just taking a moment to breathe in time, to listen to the noises around them. How pleasant, Jane thought, to be silent for a few moments. Normally noise overtook her life - normally she sought it, finding silence solitary and confining - suffocating. But how pleasant to be silent with someone. — Kate Noble

If some watcher or holy one who has spent his glad centuries by the sea of fire were to come to earth, how meaningless to him would be the ceaseless chatter of the busy tribes of men. How strange to him and how empty would sound the flat, stale, and profitless words heard in the average pulpit from week to week. And we're such a one to speak on earth would he not speak of God? Would he not charm and fascinate his hearers with rapturous descriptions of the Godhead? And after hearing him could we ever again consent to listen to anything less than theology, the doctrine of God? Would we not thereafter demand of those who would presume to teach us that they speak to us from the mount of divine vision or remain silent altogether? — A.W. Tozer

I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think. — Henry Miller

Sit quietly and listen for a voice that will say, "Be more silent." As that happens, your soul starts to revive. — Rumi

I'm intrigued that the same letters from the alphabet are used in the word silent and in the word listen. Perhaps it's evidence that the most important part of listening involves remaining silent. — Robert Herjavec

Listen to the silent whisper of your soul and then let your heart dance with song. — Debasish Mridha

Extreme torture is mute, and so we sat silent, petrified, like columns of marble buried under the sand of an earthquake. Neither wished to listen to the other because our heart-threads had become weak and even breathing would have broken them. — Kahlil Gibran

People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there.
Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way. — Martin Amis

Nightingale
Did I wound you, mutilate. Take away your voice. Did I cut something from you. Leave you locked in silence?
This is what you do: you sing. Every part of you. Your locks of hair sing, your eyes, your hands, your smile. If I listen closely I can even hear your blood.
Was I the one that took that away?
Go down to the water where we used to swim. Stand under the sky at dawn when the sky is streaked with blood. Open your mouth and shout our secret to the waves. The ocean will be your voice. You won't have to carry anything alone. Little Sister, my Spring, April. Little nightingale. Sant at the edge of the water. Your voice will come back to you. Maybe. If I am silent. — Francesca Lia Block

There is a word SILENT, which means khaamush, it has the exact same letters as the word LISTEN. So open your ears and tell me, what can you hear? — Indra Sinha

Love is silent. Yet it could fill the spaces no other sound can ever do. Truth is there's no sound without silence. We can listen to all the beautiful songs, but unless we can hear where the music is coming from, the empty spaces of our lives can never be filled and the song we sing will have no meaning. — Frederick Espiritu

But this time I chose to silence both my head and my heart so that I could listen carefully to the silent flutter of wings. — Lacey Ellmoore

I love the night. Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep. It's dark and silent in the house, but if I listen close, I hear the beat beat beat of my heart. I hear the creak and crack of the house. I hear my mum breathing gently in her sleep in the room next door. — David Almond

Close your eyes. Hear the silent snow. Listen to your soul speak. — A.D. Posey

Listen to your being. It is continuously giving you hints; it is a still, small voice. It does not shout at you, that is true. And if you are a little silent you will start feeling your way. Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost. Risking all to be oneself, that's what maturity is all about. — Osho

Livia stayed silent and tried to quiet the screaming in her head. Fuck your mother, Blake! She was a drunk and a coward. You were a child, not a man, and you were only trying to end your own pain. She held tight to Dr. Lavender's advice. Listen. This was Blake's plane crash. Livia's silence invited him to continue. — Debra Anastasia

In the depth of a spring, if you ever feel lonely and feel the need of my love, just remember me, I will be there to listen to your heart beats and silent songs of your soul. — Debasish Mridha

My friends, tonight we bring you something entirely different. Something special. The poets will rest, the sonnets will be silent, and what words of love there are will not be spoken. Tonight, my friends, and I can hear you out there, sitting alone, like me, in your chairs, your beds, driving down an empty street with no one but me to listen to your weeping; tonight, I'm going to bring you Armageddon. — Charles Grant

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We live in a society in which it seems that every space, every moment must be 'filled' with initiatives, activity, sound; often there is not even time to listen and dialogue ... Let us not be afraid to be silent outside and inside ourselves, so that we are able not only to perceive God's voice, but also the voice of the person next to us, the voices of others. — Pope Benedict XVI

The voice incessantly quelled in the chorus of human voices will always be the voice of God. And given a reality of this magnitude, I would be well advised to cease my babbling and encourage those around me to do the same. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

In the evening, when everything is tired and quiet, I sit with Walt Whitman by the rose beds and listen to what that lonely and beautiful spirit has to tell me of night, sleep, death, and the stars. This dusky, silent hour is his; and this is the time when I can best hear the beatings of that most tender and generous heart. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

No." He caught her back to him, spreading his fingers over her uninjured cheek. "Listen. When you were twelve years old I saw you for the first time. Truly saw you. And from then on, I took note whenever our paths crossed. You were so quiet it was difficult to believe you sprang from the same messy bloodlines as the rest of us. You had modesty and grace. You didn't flirt, and you didn't give quarter." His palm slipped from her face; he took up both her hands. "If the other maidens of the shire were garish bright stars, then you were the midnight around them, silent and mysterious and all the more interesting for it. I accepted you as that, mouse. I still do."

-Kit — Shana Abe

I spend a lot of time wondering what dying feels like. What dying sounds like. If I'll burst like those notes, let out my last cries of pain, and then go silent forever. Or maybe I'll turn into a shadowy static that's barely there, if you just listen hard enough. — Jasmine Warga

All the wonders you seek are within yourself. We should seek to discover our own special light. Know how to live within yourself; there in your soul lives a whole world of mysterious and enchanted thoughts; they will be drowned by noise of this world. Be still and listen to their singing and be silent. — Fyodor Tyutchev

Truly powerful people have great humility. They do not try to impress, they do not try to be influential. They simply are. People are magnetically drawn to them. They are most often very silent and focused, aware of their core selves ... They never persuade, nor do they use manipulation or aggressiveness to get their way. They listen. If there is anything they can offer to assist you, they offer it; if not, they are silent. — Sanaya Roman

One wants more time, more youth. That is it. That is all one asks for - nothing but that, a little more time. Hear it running by! Listen! In the night, in the morning, at noon, at even, rushing by, silent, stealthy, trying to hoodwink you by the fixed appearance of things that seem not to change; but never stopping. Oh, to stop it! Oh, to get it back! Oh, to dig one's toes in and refuse to be rushed headlong towards the brink! — Mary Borden

As my prayer became more attentive and inward, I had less and less to say. I finally became completely silent ... This is how it is. To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard. — Soren Kierkegaard

Up steps, three, six, nine, twelve! Slap! Their palms hit the library door.
* * *
They opened the door and stepped in.
They stopped.
The library deeps lay waiting for them.
Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. Up front was the desk where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off away were Tibet and Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mongolia, calmly toting fragments of Peiping and Yokohama and the Celebes. — Ray Bradbury

Be aware of the high notes, of the blissful faces and their soft messages, and listen for the silent message of a highly decorated gift. — Dejan Stojanovic

I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God — Soren Kierkegaard

The river taught us how to listen with a silent heart, with a waiting open soul ... — Hermann Hesse

She was silent; the great wings almost stopped moving; only a delicate stirring seemed to keep them aloft. "Listen, then," Mrs. Whatsit said. The resonant voice rose and the words seemed to be all around them so that Meg felt that she could almost reach out and touch them:
"Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that there is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift their voice; let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord! — Madeleine L'Engle

I know what I wish. I wish some Day that I might live by a River - one that is strong of current & silent; & above it, in the Pines, the Hawks shall call; & I shall live there in a small House of one Room & play the Violin, & Someone Else shall play the Harpsichord, & we will be far from all Human Habitation. We shall walk by the Banks of that River, & listen to the Buzzing of the Rushes, & that alone shall be our Company. — M T Anderson

Not everyone is treated with such respect. But whenever my father sang, all the birds in the area would fall silent and listen. His voice was beautiful, high and clear and so filled with life it made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. — Suzanne Collins

Solomon lifts his morning cup to the mountains. Sit down in this pavilion, and don't listen to religious bickering. Be silent as we absorb the spring. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Silent is an anagram of listen. — Johnny Rich

It's all about self-discipline. Like, self-obsession is connected completely with self-loathing, and it's the same with, if you've got a weight problem. It's all about ... finding some worth in yourself, knowing that you've got the discipline to do it, and knowing that other people maybe can't do it. And it's also, I think, really connected to the fact that you almost feel, like, silent, you have no voice, you're mute, there's just no, you've got no option. Even if you could express yourself nobody would listen anyway. Things that go on inside you, there's no other way to get rid of them. — Richey Edwards

Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb. — Pythagoras

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Come closer now.
Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. — Dylan Thomas

It is silent, an anagram for listen.
That is what I do. Listen while she remains silent. — Eric Jerome Dickey

This is often the way one moves into the future. For what you begin to see, there is no ready language. If you were to remain silent, listen, perhaps in response you might be able to move in a new way. Glide into it slowly, aware of every slight difference, skin and cells intelligent, reading. But trained as you are in certain regimens, chances are you proceed directly according to the old patterns, trying again what was tried before. — Susan Griffin

To heal our world we must be silent; willing to listen to the roars of the wounded. We must teach eachother how to feel, only than can an entire nation grow in peace, as the war within will slowly diminish. — Nikki Rowe

Harry and Dudley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Harry, his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor. — J.K. Rowling

The talkative listen to no one, for they are ever speaking. And the first evil that attends those who know not to be silent is that they hear nothing. — Plutarch

The only way you can find it is through being alone with your thoughts at sufficiently long intervals to give that inner voice within you a chance to cry out in distinguishable language for you. 'Here I am within you.' That is the silent voice, the voice of nature, which speaks to everyone who will listen. — Walter Russell

Nathan kept trying to reassure him. "It doesn't have to mean anything. Not to you. You can forget it, if you'd rather."
Matt listened to Nathan's heartbeat, fast and light like a deer flashing through sunshine and shadow. "Listen, Nathan ... "
Nathan was silent, but Matt could feel the immediate tension down his spine.
"I loved Rachel with all my heart. You're right, nothing changes that. But - I never wanted her the way I want you."
Nathan slid out from under him, rolled over. His face was different, grave but sort of lit from within in a way that gave Matt a funny pain in his chest. — Josh Lanyon

A woman named Helen Keller fought her way through long, silent darkness.
Though she could not see or hear;
she taught us to look at and listen to each other.
Never waiting for life to get easier,
she gave others courage to face their challenges. — Barack Obama

Ask Me
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say. — William Stafford

The Inspiration You Seek
Is Already Within You.
Be Silent And Listen. — Rumi

The very minute we think we 'have' God, God will surprise us. As we search in fire and earthquakes, God will be in the still small voice. As we listen in silent meditation, God will be shouting protests in the street. God is warning us that we had best not try to find our security in any well-defined concept or category of what is Godly - for the minute we believe we are into God, God is off again and calling us forth into some unknown place. — Carter Heyward

Well, yeah, you listen to a talking snake and there's gonna be trouble. — Mike Mignola

Listen . Keep silent .
You are not gods mouthpiece.
Try to be an ear. — Rumi

Don't try to steer the boat.
Don't open shop for yourself. Listen. Keep silent.
You are not God's mouthpiece. Try to be an ear,
And if you do speak, ask for explanations. — Rumi

The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent.' — Alfred Brendel

Turn away from the world this year and begin to listen. Listen to the whispers of your heart. Look within. Your silent companion has lit lanterns of love to illuminate the path to Wholeness. At long last, the journey you were destined to take has begun. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

We ought to be silent and listen to the voice of God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Thorn stood without motion, for only when you are truly still can you be the centre. She stood without sound, for only silent can you listen. She stood without fear, for only the fearless can understand their peril.

Thorn waited. Fearless as flowers, bright, fragile, open to the sky. Brave, as only those who've already lost can be. — Mark Lawrence

To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam. — Alan Watts

To help me be a better listener and observer, she shared a little proverb that I carry with me whenever I travel. She says, "With two eyes and two ears and one mouth, try to observe and listen four times as much as you speak."
Her advice has paid off. I learn much more by staying quiet. I pick up more cultural signals when I am observing than when I am talking. As another sage observed, "When I's talking, I ain't learning nothin' new." Or again: "Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent" (Prov 17:28). — Paul Borthwick

Real music will make you more and more refined. It will become more and more silent. In fact, real music will help you to listen to silence, where all notes disappear, where only gaps remain. One note comes, disappears, and another has not come, and there is a gap. In that gap meditation flows in you. — Rajneesh

Do the Tao Now Spend an hour, a day, a week, or a month practicing not giving unsolicited advice. Stop yourself for an instant and call upon your silent knowing. Ask a question, rather than giving advice or citing an example from your life, and then just listen to yourself and the other person. As Lao-tzu would like you to know, that's the highest state of man. — Wayne W. Dyer

Since we nowadays think that all a man needs for acquisition of truth is to exert his brain more or less vigorously, and since we consider an ascetic approach to knowledge hardly sensible, we have lost the awareness of the close bond that links the knowing of truth to the condition of purity. Thomas says that unchastity's first-born daughter is blindness of the spirit. Only he who wants nothing for himself, who not subjectively 'interested,' can know the truth. On the other hand, an impure, selfishly corrupted will-to-pleasure destroys both resoluteness of spirit and the ability of the psyche to listen in silent attention to the language of reality. — Josef Pieper

Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When it's silent, your brain fills in the music," Decker told him. "After all these years, I think I've finally learned how to listen. — Faye Kellerman

I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. — Helen Keller

When we want to talk, we can instead listen, and let our attentiveness to another's need to speak be our silent statement. — Bryant McGill

In public discourse, the challenge is not to stifle robust debate, but rather to make sure that it is real debate. The first obligation for Christians is to listen carefully to opponents and if they are not willing to do so, then Christians should simply be silent. To engage in a war of words is to engage in a symbolic violence that is fundamentally at odds with the gospel. And too often, on such hot button issues as poverty, abortion, race relations, and homosexuality, the poor, children, minorities, and gays are used as weapons in ideological warfare. This too is an expression of instrumentalization.16 — James Davison Hunter

Things it helps me to remember
When in a bad mood, keep quiet or still.
Baggy jumpers don't suit you.
When you're tired you get doubtful.
Difficulties come in spurts.
Listen to the echo of your own voice. Avoid be strident.
All aeroplanes go through clouds during their journeys. So do people during theirs.
Often greater clarity comes out of confusion. You have to be puzzled before you find a solution.
PMS often brings on a crisis of confidence.
Ordinariness is restful.
If someone is explosive in front of you, be silent. If you feel explosive, be silent. — Aidan Chambers