Quotes & Sayings About Speaking Without Words

My most ardent wish is that you, and everyone like you, will look up. That you'll do so and never be beaten into the ground again. I write handbills because I can write those words without fear of reprisal - because if I am discovered, the House of Lords will never prosecute me. I write because those words must be written. I write because to not write, to not speak, would be to waste what I have been given. — Courtney Milan

There are some people who could hear you speak a thousand words, and still not understand you. And there are others who will understand - without you even speaking a word. — Yasmin Mogahed

To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex's eye. "What's same?" she asked. She looked at Alex nose-to-beak. Without hesitation, Alex's beak opened: "Co-lor." "What's different?" Pepperberg asked. "Shape," Alex said. Since he lacked lips and only slightly opened his beak to reply, the words seemed to come from the air around him, as if a ventriloquist were speaking. But the words - and what can only be called the thoughts - were entirely his. — Virginia Morell

He was done talking. Aiden came off the wall so fast the water reacted in a frenzy of bubbling. He - we - were in a frenzy. His arms crushed me to him, his mouth demanding, saying those three little words over and over again without speaking them. Aiden lifted me up, one hand burying deep in my hair, the other pressing into my lower back, fitting us together. He turned and my back was against the edge and he was everywhere all at once, stealing my breath, my heart, my soul. There was no coming up for air, no control or limits. There was no tottering on the edge. We both fell headfirst. In his arms, in the way the water bubbled and moved with our bodies, I may've lost track of time, but I gained a little part of me. I gained a part of him that U would hold close for the rest of my days, no matter how long or short that turned out to be. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

She thought with pity of all the men and women who were not light-hearted when they loved, who were cold, who were reluctant, who were shy, who imagined that passion and tenderness were two things separate from one another, and not the one, gloriously intermingled, so that to be fierce was also to be gentle, so that silence was a speaking without words. — Daphne Du Maurier

Culture is a vulture but there's also vulture culture and cultured vultures and cultured yougurt (cherry, peach, pear, pineapple, grape, vanilla, plain, cherry vanilla, pineapple orage, cranberry, orange, mandarin orange, coffee, apricot, raspberry, blueberry, boysenberry, prune). And speaking of vulture culture there's counter-culture and under-the-counter culture, too. But whether you call it kulchur with a k and a ch and without the e it's still the same thing and you can't disguise it with pretty frills and a gallon of dog sweat. It still has two syllables and TWO-SYLLABLE WORDS SUCK so you can just forgetit, man. It's no fun at all and even fun wouldn't be fun if it was called funjure or funion or funching. But somehow fucking is still loads of fun even though there's that extra 3-letter cluster of vowels and consonants. Proof positive that there are exceptions everywhere you look. But don't look too hard, you might get eyestrain. — Richard Meltzer

At that moment I knew without a doubt that God himself was speaking to me. He cared. He was there. He came to help even when I could not call out loud or explain my fear in words. — Catherine Lawton

Writing is my passion. Words are the way to know ecstasy. Without them life is barren. The poet insists, language is a body of suffering and when you take up language you take up the suffering too. All my life I have been suffering for words. Words have been the source of the pain and the way to heal. Struck as a child for talking, for speaking out of turn, for being out of my place. Struck as a grown woman for not knowing when to shut up, for not being willing to sacrifice words for desire. Struck by writing a book that disrupts. There are many ways to be hit. Pain is the price we pay to speak the truth. — Bell Hooks

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking. Then there comes a point when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. — Anne Spollen

The next time you wish you could find the right words to say to someone who is hurting, just remember that dogs are a man's best friend without ever speaking a word to them. Simply be present and have sympathy. — Ashly Lorenzana

Need we go into details about what I said to Judy? I am no poet, and I suppose what I said was very much what everybody always says, and although I remember her as speaking golden words, I cannot recall precisely anything she said. If love is to be watched and listened to without embarrassment, it must be transmuted into art, and I don't know how to do that, and it is not what I have come to Zurich to learn. — Robertson Davies

I could have spoken from Rhode Island where I have been staying ... But I felt that, in speaking from the house of Lincoln, of Jackson, and of Wilson, my words would better convey both the sadness I feel in the action I was compelled today to make and the firmness with which I intend to pursue this course until the orders of the federal court at Little Rock can be executed without unlawful interference. (On sending troops to enforce integration in Little Rock AR High School) — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words HOME, CHRIST, ALE, MASTER, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language. — James Joyce

Life was charmed but without politics or religion. It was the life of children of the children of the pioneers -life after God- a life of earthly salvation on the edge of heaven. Perhaps this is the finest thing to which we may aspire, the life of peace, the blurring between dream life and real life - and yet I find myself speaking these words with a sense of doubt. I think there was a trade-off somewhere along the line. I think the price we paid for our golden life was an inability to fully believe in love; instead we gained an irony that scorched everything it touched. And I wonder if this irony is the price we paid for the loss of God. — Douglas Coupland

He understood why people held hands: he'd always thought it was about possessiveness, saying This is mine. But it wasn't. It was about maintaining contact. It was about speaking without words. It was about I want you with me and Don't go. — Cassandra Clare

The three men walked on and were met by ever more new saints. The saints were not exactly moving or even speaking, but the silence and immobility of the dead were not absolute. There was, under the ground, a motion that was not completely usual, and a particular sort of voices rang out without disturbing the sternness and repose. The saints spoke using words from psalms and lines from the lives of saints that Arseny remembered well from childhood. When they drew the candles closer, shadows shifted along dried faces and brown, half-bent hands. The saints seemed to raise their heads, smile, and beckon, barely perceptibly, with their hands. A city of saints, whispered Ambrogio, following the play of the shadow. They present us the illusion of life. No, objected Arseny, also in a whisper. They disprove the illusion of death. — Evgenij Vodolazkin

An imperfect creative expression is much more sensible and creative than a grammatically perfect expression without an iota of sense and value in it. — Michael Bassey Johnson

He understands why people hold hands: he'd always thought it was about possessiveness, saying This is mine. But it's about maintaining contact. It is about speaking without words. It is about I want you with me and don't go. — Cassandra Clare

Not one man in a million would have allowed me the time without speaking. I opened my mind, let my gaurd down completely, relaxed. His silence washed over me. I stood, closed my eyes, breathed out the relief that was too profound for words. — Charlaine Harris

There are few who would need advisers, if they were only accustomed to appeal to themselves in their calmest, holiest moments. If, when embarrassed with doubt as to any course of action, they would turn aside from the immediate tumult of the world, and from the vain speaking of those who "darken counsel by words without knowledge;" and would then commune with their hearts alone, at night, the heavens their silent counsellors, they would act not always in accordance with the wise men of this world, but with that wisdom which bringeth peace. — Arthur Helps

Friends have ways of speaking without words. — Alice Dalgliesh

That's politics, power: it's all verbal, a continuous blizzard of words. But it's not just speaking, it's making statements. It's action; it's doing something without doing anything. — Harry Mulisch

Prayers often begin as memories. When we remember those whom we have loved, and miss them, naturally we hope for their safety and their happiness, wherever they might be. That hope turns into a wish, and whenever a wish is voiced, even silently, even without words, it becomes a supplication. Perhaps we don't know to whom we're speaking; perhaps we ask before we truly know who's listening, or before we even believe that listener exists. But I judge it a very fine beginning, to make a practice of remembering those people we have loved. When we remember others fondly, we wish them health and happiness and all good things. — Eleanor Catton

They might be talking in perfect latin tongue and without warning begin to talk in perfect anglo tongue and keep it up like that, alternating between a thing that believes itself to be perfect and a thing that believes itself to be perfect, morphing back and forth between two beasts until out of carelessness or clear intent they suddenly stop switching tongues and start speaking that other one. In it brims nostalgia for the land they left or never knew when they use the words with which they name objects; while actions are alluded to with an anglo verb conjugated latin-style, pinning on a sonorous tail from back there. Using in one tongue the word for a thing in the other makes the attributes of both resound: if you say Give me fire when they say Give me a light, what is not to be learned about fire, light and the act of giving? It's not another way of saying things: these are new things — Yuri Herrera

I worked it through with pride,I almost spoke without words, and i'm masterly at speaking without words.All my life I have spoken without words, and I have passed through whole tragedies on my own account without words — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fools!" said Bard. "Why waste words and wrath on those unhappy creatures? Doubtless they perished first in fire, before Smaug came to us." Then even as he was speaking, the thought came into his heart of the fabled treasure of the Mountain lying without guard or owner, and he fell suddenly silent. He thought of the Master's words, and of Dale rebuilt, and filled with golden bells, if he could but find the men. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Now, in a shift of light, the shadows of birds are more pronounced on the gallery's white wall. The shadow of each bird is speaking to me. Each shadow doubles the velocity, ferocity of forms. The shadow, my shadow now merges with theirs. Descension. Ascension. The velocity of wings creates the whisper to awaken ... .
I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell. I want to possess a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars. — Terry Tempest Williams

Too, if you're a true contemplative, your life and words will overflow with spiritual wisdom, compassion, and fruitful insight, because you're sure to measure out what you say carefully and calmly, eschewing lies and speaking without the shrill pretense of hypocrites. — Anonymous

Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick
you will go far.' If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting; and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples. — Theodore Roosevelt

They didn't need the words, if they were willing to be silent long enough to learn to speak without them. — Maggie Stiefvater

Friends have a way of speaking without words. — Alice Dalgliesh

I do not attempt to deny," said she, "that I think very highly of him - that I greatly esteem, that I like him." Marianne here burst forth with indignation - "Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment." Elinor could not help laughing. "Excuse me," said she; "and be assured that I meant no offence to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my own feelings. Believe them to be stronger than I have declared; believe them, in short, to be such as his merit, and the suspicion - the hope of his affection for me may warrant, without imprudence or folly. — Jane Austen