Speak Quietly Quotes & Sayings

Frost's face darkened. "What gives you the right to speak for Miss Hathaway and her family?"
Cam saw no reason to be discreet. "I'm going to marry her."
Frost nearly dropped the iron bar. "Don't be absurd. Amelia would never marry you."
"Why not?"
"Good God," Frost exclaimed incredulously, "how can you ask that? You're not a gentleman of her class, and ... hell and damnation, you're not even a real Gypsy. You're a mongrel."
"All the same, I'm going to marry her."
"I'll see you in hell first!" Frost cried, taking a step toward him.
"Either drop that bar," Cam said quietly, "or I'll dislocate your arm." He sincerely hoped Frost would take a swing at him. To his disappointment, Frost set the bar on the ground. — Lisa Kleypas

Miss can I get a second to speak and quietly mention,
That I am so into who you are, can I get your attention? — Busta Rhymes

Taking on all at once Germany, Japan, and Italy - diverse enemies all - did not require the weeding out of all the fascists and their supporters in Mexico, Argentina, Eastern Europe, and the Arab world. Instead, those in jackboots and armbands worldwide quietly stowed all their emblems away as organized fascism died on the vine once the roots were torn out in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo. So too will the terrorists, once their sanctuaries and capital shrivel up - as is happening as we speak. — Victor Davis Hanson

They speak little; it is as if the air has been churned up with decade's worth of fruitless pursuit and missed connections and thoughts unspoken, and they are waiting quietly for all this matter - these motes of opportunity forgone - to settle around them. — Doug Dorst

Rachel had decided he WAS handsome during their hike to the camp. Though the way he kept telling her to speak more quietly or to look where she was going was annoying. By the time they finally got there, she was beginning to think his looks were his only good attribute. — Teri Hall

When we speak quietly one to another things somehow get settled. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Speak your truth quietly & clearly; and listen to others, even the dull & ignorant; they too have their story. — Max Ehrmann

I'm sorry. It's Hard for me. I do love you," she said quietly. "Sometimes it scares me because you're the first. And the only"
He held her there until he was sure he could speak, then eased her back, looked into her eyes "You've chaged my life. Become my life." He touched his lips to hers, let the kiss deepen slowly, silkily. "I need you — J.D. Robb

Always make it a practice to stir your own mind thoroughly to think through what you have easily believed. Your position is not really yours until you make it yours through suffering and study. The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn't know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly. — Oswald Chambers

Behold a tree. Does it not speak to us thusly: 'Don't you see that God is not working himself into a frenzy in me? I am calmly, quietly, silently pouring forth my life and bringing forth fruit. Do thou likewise.' — Clarence Jordan

The World can feel like a strange and confusing place for an autistic person. Lights, sounds and smells are extremely intense and overwhelming sometimes. People also can be confusing and overwhelming to me. It can help me if you are consistent with what you say and do; please say what you mean. Also provide me with a safe, quiet place to recover when I'm really overwhelmed. Please speak quietly and calmly and give me time to de-stress. — Tina J. Richardson

If there was indeed a recording of the conversation that followed, it did not exist for long. Carter would never speak of it, except to say that it was among the most difficult of his long career. The only other witness was Ed Fielding. The security man could not hear Carter's words, but he could see the terrible toll they were taking. He saw a hand gripping the telephone with such force that the knuckles were white. And he saw the eyes. The unusually bright green eyes now burning with a terrifying rage. As Fielding slipped quietly from the room, he realized he had never seen such rage before. He did not know what his friend Adrian Carter was saying to the legendary Israeli assassin. But he was certain of one thing. Blood was going to flow. And men were going to die. — Daniel Silva

A fragile thing, brittle-looking, an objet d' art, round and perfect: but for how long? From far enough out in orbit, one has no doubt that one could drop the Earth on the floor of night and break it. An urge arises to step softly, to speak quietly, so as to keep whoever might be carrying the pretty toy from being startled and fumbling it. — Diane Duane

Of course, the majority of us would speak up in the face of outrageous bigotry, but do we speak up in a social situation when someone casually refers to something as 'gay'? If we don't, we are standing with the homophobes whom we are quietly fighting. — Jack Antonoff

Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain with death - the seas bear only commerce - men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world lies quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way. — Douglas MacArthur

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we are all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quietly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone Else's words ... I was going to die, if not sooner then later whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. — Audre Lorde

And again, there are those who sit in their swamp and speak thus from the rushes: 'Virtue - that means to sit quietly in the swamp.
We bite nobody and avoid him who wants to bite: and in everything we hold the opinion that is given us. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I wish I could run into the world's arms. Linger within the spaces between nothing. I wish I could filter out of existence. To live quietly without dying. I wish I could be cherished by life itself. To speak and sing volumes without lying to myself. — F.K. Preston

Be slow to speak, and only after having first listened quietly, so that you may understand the meaning, leanings, and wishes of those who do speak. Thus you will better know when to speak and when to be silent. — Saint Ignatius

What dreams lie dormant hidden in the womb of your soul, quietly waiting, incubating seeking opportunity to come forth?
Like the female cycle that comes every 28 days, over and over again, dreams come to rest in the soil of your mind. They compel you. They disturb you. They haunt you with visions of possibility.
They prompt you to walk restlessly through life knowing that you may someday stop, listen and decide to nourish them with faith and action.
Yield to the silent urging. Listen. Hear. Receive.
Let the dream speak. For it will burst forth from the womb of your spirit. It frees into existence something that lives, brooding in the corner your mind. Hold the seed. Grow the seed. Birth the seed. And life will begin anew. — Stella Payton

The poor are always prophetic. As true prophets always point out, they reveal God's design. That is why we should take time to listen to them. And that means staying near them, because they speak quietly and infrequently; they are afraid to speak out, they lack confidence in themselves because they have been broken and oppressed. But if we listen to them, they will bring us back to the essential. — Jean Vanier

You took advantage of Amelia," Merripen said.
"Not that it matters," Cam said in Romany, "but how did you find out?"
Merripen's huge hands flexed as if longing to rip him apart. Lucifer himself could not have had blacker, more burning eyes. "Speak in English," he said harshly. "I don't like the old language."
Frowning in curiosity, Cam readily complied.
"The maids were talking about it," Merripen replied. "I heard them standing outside my door. You dishonored one of my family."
"Yes, I know," Cam said quietly.
"You're not good enough for her."
"I know that, too." Watching him intently, Cam asked, "Do you want her for yourself, chal?"
Merripen looked mortally offended. "She's a sister to me."
"That's good. Because I want her for my wife. — Lisa Kleypas

You have to be you. You can't be anybody else. If you speak loudly, and people tell you to speak quietly, you can do it for a little bit, but loud people are loud, and people who are not, are not. — Mario Testino

But there is an unholy fascination in systematic noise. He did not flee from it incontinently, as one might have expected him to do. He remained, astonished at himself for remaining, since nothing could have been more repulsive to his tastes, more painful to his senses, and, so to speak, more contrary to his genius, than this rude exhibition of vigour. The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as if witnessing a deed of violence; and that impression was so strong that it seemed marvelous to see the people sitting so quietly on their chairs, drinking so calmly out of their glasses, and giving no signs of distress, anger, or fear. Heyst averted his gaze from the unnatural spectacle of their indifference. — Joseph Conrad

Ungrace does its work quietly and lethally, like a poisonous, undetectable gas. A father dies unforgiven. A mother who once carried a child in her own body does not speak to that child for half its life. The toxin steals on, from generation to generation. — Philip Yancey

Mrs. Roosevelt seemed calm in her characteristic, graceful dignity. She stepped forward and placed her arm gently about my shoulder. "Harry," she said quietly, "the President is dead." For a moment, I could not bring myself to speak. The last news we had had from Warm Springs was that Mr. Roosevelt was recuperating nicely. In fact, he was apparently doing so well that no member of his immediate family, and not even his personal physician, was with him. All this flashed through my mind before I found my voice. "Is there anything I can do for you?" I asked at last. I shall never forget her deeply understanding reply. "Is there anything we can do for you?" she asked. "For you are the one in trouble now. — Harry Truman

In an argument, you may silence your opponent by pressing an advantage of strength or of wealth, or of education. But you do not really convince him. Though he is no longer saying anything, in his heart he still keeps to his opinion, the only way to make him change that opinion is to speak quietly and reasonably. When he understands that you are not trying to defeat him, but only to find the truth, he will listen to you and perhaps accept what you tell him. — Kano Jigoro

I shall not lie!" Eilonwy cried, "not for this traitor and deserter."
"It is not for him," Taran said quietly, "but for the sake of our quest."
"It isn't right," Eilonwy began, tears starting in her eyes.
"We do not speak of rightness," Taran answered. "We speak of a task to be finished. — Lloyd Alexander

He had felt that a moment before his making the turn, someone had been there. The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through. Perhaps his nose detected a faint perfume, perhaps the skin on the backs of his hands, on his face, felt the temperature rise at this one spot where a person's standing might raise the immediate atmosphere ten degrees for an instant. There was no understanding it. Each time he made the turn, he saw only the white, unused, buckling sidewalk, with perhaps, on one night, something vanishing swiftly across a lawn before he could focus his eyes or speak.
But now, tonight, he slowed almost to a stop. His inner mind, reaching out to turn the corner for him, had heard the faintest whisper. Breathing? Or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there, waiting?
He turned the corner. — Ray Bradbury

Speak quietly to yourself & promise there will be better days. whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. tomorrow comes more brightly ... — Mary Anne Radmacher

But living alone forever and ever, among the quietly sleeping tree trunks, with animals that ran away, with whom one could not speak - that would be unbearably sad. — Hermann Hesse

Being with Anna is easy. She's the one."
The one. It stops my heart. I thought Max was the one, but ... there's that other one.
The first one.
"Do you believe in that?" I ask quietly. "In one person for everyone?"
Something changes in St Clair's eyes. Maybe sadness. "I can't speak for anyone but myself," he says. "But, for me, yes. I have to be with Anna. But this is something you have to figure out on your own. I can't answer that for you, no one can."
"Oh."
"Lola." He rolls his chair over to my side. "I know things are shite right now. And in the name of friendship and full disclosure, I went through something similar last year. When I met Anna, I was with someone else. And it took a long time before I found the courage to do the hard thing. But you have to do the hard thing."
I swallow. "And what's the hard thing?"
"You have to be honest with yourself. — Stephanie Perkins

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another - until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. — Rick Perlstein

Help me always to speak the truth quietly, to listen with an open mind when others speak, and to remember the peace that may be found in silence. — Robert Muller

I started out in silence, writing as quietly as I had read, and then eventually people read some of what I had written, and some of the readers entered my world or drew me into theirs. I started out in silence and traveled until I arrived at a voice that was heard far away
first the silent voice that can only be read, and then I was asked to speak aloud and to read aloud. When I began to read aloud, another voice, one I hardly recognized, emerged from my mouth. Maybe it was more relaxed, because writing is speaking to no one, and even when you're reading to a crowd, you're still in that conversation with the absent, the faraway, the not yet born, the unknown, and the long gone for whom writers write, the crowd of the absent who hover all around the desk. — Rebecca Solnit

When you see anyone complaining of such and such a person's ill-nature and bad temper, know that the complainant is bad-tempered, forasmuch as he speaks ill of that bad-tempered person, because he alone is good-tempered who is quietly forbearing towards the bad-tempered and ill-natured. — Rumi

If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness. To abused women, meanwhile, the silence means that no one will help - just what her partner wants her to believe. Anyone who chooses to quietly look the other way therefore unwittingly becomes the abuser's ally. — Lundy Bancroft

We should comfort ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages-stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us. — Arthur Schopenhauer

They didn't speak. Words were powerless now. Like a pair of dancers who had stopped mid-step, they simply held each other quietly, giving themselves up to the flow of time. Time that encompassed both past and present, and even a portion of the future. Nothing came between their two bodies, as her warm breath brushed his neck. Tsukuru shut his eyes, letting the music wash over him as he listened to Eri's heartbeat. The beating of her heart kept time with the slap of the little boat against the pier. — Haruki Murakami

For some moments the two men sat quietly, each wrapped in his own thoughts, then Ivor rose. 'I should speak to Levon about tomorrow's hunt,' he said. 'Sixteen [eltors], I think.'
'At least,' the shaman said in an aggrieved tone. 'I could eat a whole one myself. We haven't feasted in a long time, Ivor.'
Ivor snorted. 'A very long time, you greedy old man. Twelve whole days ... why aren't you fat?'
'Becaues,' the wisest one explained patiently, 'you never have enough food at the feasts. — Guy Gavriel Kay

Howard Altmann has found a way to make language transform itself. If the elusive moment between I and Thou could speak, it might be one of his quietly amazing lines-'you ask the silence to invert itself / like a gymnast in the dark ... ' Without a trace of rhetoric, In This House reminds us of the power of poetry: to show us how to live in a world in which we are strangers. It's a thrill to come close to such an original and deeply realized art. — Dennis Nurkse

But for all their differences, shyness and introversion have in common something profound. The mental state of a shy extrovert sitting quietly in a business meeting may be very different from that of a calm introvert - the shy person is afraid to speak up, while the introvert is simply overstimulated - but to the outside world, the two appear to be the same. This can give both types insight into how our reverence for alpha status blinds us to things that are good and smart and wise. — Susan Cain

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

My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughind and wiping the tears from each others eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my family hands me the snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager to see what develops. Ghe grey-greensurface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in suprise to see, her long-cherished wish. — Amy Tan

The problem with English is this: You usually can't open your mouth and it comes out just like that
first you have to think what you want to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right.
But then because you have to do all this, when you get to the final step, something strange has happened to you and you speak the way a drunk walks. And, because you are speaking like falling, it's as if you are an idiot, when the truth is that it's the language and the whole process that's messed up. And then the problem with those who speak only English is this: they don't know how to listen; they are busy looking at your falling instead of paying attention to what you are saying. — NoViolet Bulawayo

We live in a noisy world. Revelation comes in the quiet times. It will come when the Lord can speak to our feelings. Go quietly. Go quietly into the world. Go quietly about your affairs, and learn that in the still, small hours of the morning the Lord will speak to you. He will never fail to answer your prayers.
--Boyd K. Packer — Carolyn J. Rasmus

Cato, being scurrilously treated by a low and vicious fellow, quietly said to him, "A contest between us is very unequal, for thou canst bear ill language with ease, and return it with pleasure; but to me it is unusual to hear, and disagreeable to speak it." There are none more abusive to others than they that lie most open to it themselves; but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me today will have somebody to laugh at him tomorrow. — Seneca The Younger

Never mind Phil and the violets just now, Anne," said Gilbert quietly, taking her hand in a clasp from which she could not free it. "There is something I want to say to you." "Oh, don't say it," cried Anne, pleadingly. "Don't - PLEASE, Gilbert." "I must. Things can't go on like this any longer. Anne, I love you. You know I do. I - I can't tell you how much. Will you promise me that some day you'll be my wife?" "I - I can't," said Anne miserably. "Oh, Gilbert - you - you've spoiled everything." "Don't you care for me at all?" Gilbert asked after a very dreadful pause, during which Anne had not dared to look up. "Not - not in that way. I do care a great deal for you as a friend. But I don't love you, Gilbert." "But can't you give me some hope that you will - yet?" "No, I can't," exclaimed Anne desperately. "I never, never can love you - in that way - Gilbert. You must never speak of this to me again." There — L.M. Montgomery

The captain survived. He's a placid, clean-looking man, more limbs than torso, with a fresh gash on his face that pains him terribly. He trembles and sniffles, holding the wound as though his face would fall apart were his hands to leave it. Mother would have called him a shiteating ninnypriss. Eo would have taken a different tack, so I stand over him and speak quietly. — Pierce Brown