Sometime Silence Quotes & Sayings

The thing to keep in mind is that we're still in the very early days when it comes to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Saying there's a silence is a bit like if Columbus, looking to discover a new continent, only sailed 10 miles off the coast of Spain before turning back to say, 'Nothing out there!' — Seth Shostak

Living with her taught me this:
That silence is a thick and dark curtain,
the kind that pulls down over a shop window;
that love is the repercussion of a stone
bouncing off that same window - and that pain
is something you can embrace, like a rag doll
nobody will ask you to share. — Judith Ortiz Cofer

As writers we are always seeking support. First we should notice that we are already supported every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support. There is the sunlight coming though the window and the silence of the morning. Begin from these. — Natalie Goldberg

Silence is the biggest weapon sometime.. — Debolina Bhawal

The Pentagon Papers case stands today as a barrier to silence by official edict. — Anthony Lewis

Real speech can only come from complete silence. Incomplete silence is as fussy as deliberate conversation. — Dorothy Richardson

That doesn't make any sense."

"Nothing makes any sense anymore. Like, why am I talking to you? Why am I telling you this when you don't care?"

This question, at least, I knew the answer to. "But that's why you're telling me." I knew it was true. If we'd had the opportunity to deliver our confessions to anyone who actually cared about their contents, there was no way either of us would've opened our mouths. Sharing revelations is easier when it doesn't matter.

She was quiet. I heard other girls' voices in the background, high, wordless streams of conversation, followed by the hiss of running water, and then silence again. "Okay," she said.

"Okay, what?" I asked.

"Okay, maybe you can call me. Sometime. Now you have my number."

I didn't even have time to say bye before she hung up. — Maggie Stiefvater

I held Angie Luna in that room for hours, and I remember the different times we made love like epochs in a civilization, each movement and every touch, apex upon abyss. In the luxury of our bed, we tried every position and every angle. I explored the curves on her body and delighted in seeing the freedom of her ecstasy. Her desperate whispers and pleas. I told her I loved her, and she said she loved me too. We lay in bed with our limbs entangled, in a pacific silence that reminded me of existing on a beach just for the sake of such an existence. I couldn't imagine the world ever becoming better, and for some strange reason the thought slipped into my head that I had suddenly grown to be an old man because I could only hope to repeat, but never improve on, a night like this. I finally took her home sometime when the interstate was empty, and the bridges seemed to lead to nowhere, for they were desolate too. — Sergio Troncoso

Silence and twilight fell over the garden. Far away the sea was lapping gently and monotonously on the bar. The wind of evening in the poplars sounded like some sad, weird old rune-some broken dream of old memories. A slender, shapely young aspen rose up before them against the fine maize and emerald and paling rose of the western sky, which brought out every leaf and twig in dark, tremulous, elfin loveliness. — L.M. Montgomery

Spade didn't respond with any useless, comforting cliches, for which she was grateful. She's head enough of those well-meaning phrases after Randy died. Why couldn't people acknowledge that occasionally, life just sucked? Didn't they realize that sometime silence was more comforting than the more sincere expression of sympathy or attempt at showing the deeper meaning behind it all? — Jeaniene Frost

Silence is the mother of all screams. — N.J. Paige

But I saw Blake earlier and he said he and Nate were taking off for an overnight business thing. So ... "
" ... you're just going to jump their fence and their pool," I finished for her.
Silence. Then Jamie said, "It's twenty-five degrees! In December! Do you know what this means?"
"The apocalypse? — Sarah Dessen

I'm familiar with that feeling of silence that comes with a very imminent catastrophe, when you know you have absolutely no control over a situation. — Dave Matthews

Beastly

It's okay to be different
It's up to you to be magnificent
You are the one that matters
Don't allow yourself to be shattered
Do allow yourself to silence the noise
Feel everything including the joys
Beastly doesn't have to be ugly
It's up to you to make it lovely — Stace Lee

I remember as a very young child being warned that libraries and bookstores were quiet places where noise wasn't allowed. Here was yet another thing the adults had gotten wrong, for these book houses pulsed with sounds; they just weren't noisy. The books hummed. The collective noise they made was like riding on a large boat where the motor's steady thrum and tickle vibrated below one's sneakers, ignorable until you listened, then omnipresent and relentless, the sound that carried you forward. Each book brimmed with noises it wanted to make inside your head the moment you opened it; only the shut covers prevented it from shouting ideas, impulses, proverbs, and plots into that sterile silence. — Wendy Welch

In the silence, nothing was fragmented. There were no separate strands to gather together, to fumble, to complete for attention. In the silence, all of that fell away, and there was only what was here, and what was to be done. — Geoff Ryman

If you want the light, like you say you do, then why do you keep it strangled in the
dark? If you preach love, like you strive to, why do you run away from practising?
My love,
the universe you fumble for doesn't exist, if you don't start from within. Before you,
all that I can be is eyes and heart. And all that I can do is to remain by your side,
for I can't love you any less than the more I do now. — Soar

Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence. — Jodi Picoult

I like the way you make the silence bearable. — T.M. Frazier

Minority of people are destined for success while majority succeed because they are determined for success. Where upon, work hard in silence and let success make the noise . — Osunsakin Adewale

A long moment of silence stretched out between them. Her conversation to this point had mostly been an attempt to distract him while she gathered her feelings: gathered them and ejected them, so that she could face him with a mind that was blank and smooth, with no thoughts for him to read. She was fairly good at this. Even bleary-headed and shaky with fatigue, she was good at emptying her mind. — Kristin Cashore

That girl loves you, Gray. We're going to get out of this, and when we do-I'd bet a hundred sovereigns to one, Sophia will be there waiting for you."
"Sophia?" Gray blinked. "Her name is Sophia?"
Joss chuckled. "I was right. You didn't know."
"But-" Gray scratched the back of his neck. "But how did you? Since when have you known her name?"
Joss shrugged, his expression composed. "Since sometime yesterday." He laughed at Gray's befuddled silence. "When you dropped your trousers to take a piss. It's painted on your arse. — Tessa Dare

Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, "This ... this ... "; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos. — Paul Goodman

Watney entered the hack earlier today, and we confirmed it worked. We updated Pathfinder's OS without any problems. We sent the rover patch, which Pathfinder rebroadcast. Once Watney executes the patch and reboots the rover, we should get a connection." "Jesus, what a complicated process," Venkat said. "Try updating a Linux server sometime," Jack said. After a moment of silence, Tim said, "You know he was telling a joke, right? That was supposed to be funny." "Oh," said Venkat. "I'm a physics guy, not a computer guy." "He's not funny to computer guys, either. — Andy Weir

The flickering candlelight conspired with the silence, and we only interrupted each other's reading to share a casual delight. — Keith Donohue

I arise to day ... In the name of Silence / Womb of the Word, / In the name of Stillness / Home of Belonging, / In the name of the Solitude / of the Soul and the Earth — John O'Donohue

He might be famous (local newspaper or television) for finding it, true - but if fame takes away the thing it celebrates, then Sebastien would prefer the inspired silence. We're all famous in our own hearts anyway. — Simon Van Booy

The silence was worse than the gunshots. The wait worse than the confusion. The forebode worse
than any danger. — Willowy Whisper

If you believe the noises of the world, rather than the silences of your soul, you will be lost. — Neale Donald Walsch

The forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death. That first night, before its forty days begin, the soul lies still against sweated-on pillows and watches the living fold the hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and silence to keep the new soul from the doors and the windows and the cracks in the floor so that it does not run out of the house like a river. The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past ... and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to come back. — Tea Obreht

If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence. Since God cannot be imagined, anything our imagination tells us about Him is ultimately a lie and therefore we cannot know Him as He really is unless we pass beyond everything that can be imagined and enter into an obscurity without images and without the likeness of any created thing. — Thomas Merton

Wait: His boyfriend? He was gay? The focus on the lens sharpened, and I could see it clearly now. Of course he was gay. Everyone could see that, except the chubby little lonely heart sitting at seven o'clock, drawing sparkly rainbows on the page with her glitter crayons. I was still beating myself up when the round robin arrived to me, and I sputtered along trying to assemble some phony epiphany with strong verbs, but tears dripped down my face.
The room fell into silence as people waited for me to explain. But what could I possibly say? That I had just discovered my future husband was gay? That I was going to live the rest of my life surrounded by nothing but empty lasagna pans and an overloved cat destined to die before me?
"I'm sorry," I finally said. "I was just reminded of something very painful." And I guess that wasn't a lie. — Sarah Hepola

Your voice is powerful. Your voice has meaning. If it didn't, people wouldn't work so hard to silence you.
Remember that. — Kameron Hurley

Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference. — Ambrose Bierce

What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire? What are the incredible things, but the things that one has faithfully believed? What are the improbable things? The things that one has done oneself. No, Ernest; life cheats us with shadows, like a puppet- master. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train. We come across some noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our days, but it passes away from us, and things less noble take its place, and on some grey windy dawn, or odorous eve of silence and of silver, we find ourselves looking with callous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed. — Oscar Wilde

A silence, the brief Sabbath of an hour,
Reigns o'er the fields; the laborer sits within
His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile,
Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog
Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade.
Now the gray marmot, with uplifted paws,
No more sits listening by his den, but steals
Abroad, in safety, to the clover-field,
And crops its juicy-blossoms. — William C. Bryant

Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,
The burning lake turns into a forest pool,
The fire subsides into rings of water,
A sunlit silence. — Theodore Roethke

Silence is a protective coating over pain. — E. Lockhart

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

Silence is what causes most of humanity's problems — Lauren Kate

It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they 'speak with the accent of natives' they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds. — Ivan Illich

As you get older as a comedian and keep doing it, what you actually start to cherish on stage is not the build-up to the jokes, but how comfortable you can be in the silence and the non-laughing parts, and how long you can take the audience without a laugh to then get a huge reaction. — Patton Oswalt