Quotes on Silence

In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth... Deeper reflection helps us to discover the links between events that at first sight seem unconnected... For this to happen, it is necessary to develop an appropriate environment, a kind of 'eco-system' that maintains a just equilibrium between silence, words, images and sounds.

Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think....In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think.

The most generous choices, especially the persevering, are the fruit of profound and prolonged union with God in prayerful silence.

The silence killed your faith.

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

All human beings go through a previous life... Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude of spiritual worlds?

Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.

Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace.

No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied - it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.

Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.

As I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.

We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past ... while we silence the rebels of the present.

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: 'When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?'

Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant.

Build your inner environment. Practice Silence! I remember the wonderful discipline of the Great Ones. When we used to talk and chatter, they would say: "Go back into your inner castle." It was very hard to comprehend then, but now I understand the way of peace

When silence confronts us, the question to which there is no answer rings out in the silence. That ultimate "why," that great "why" is like a light that blots out everything, but a blinding light; nothing more can be made out.

Just by being aware, thoughts start disappearing. There is no need to fight. Your awareness is enough to destroy them. And when the mind is empty, the temple is ready. And inside the temple the only god worth placing is silence. So those three words you have to remember: relaxation, thoughtlessness, silence. And if these three words are no more words to you but become experiences, your life will be transformed.

Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.

I teach you both effort and effortlessness, because unless you attain to effortless-effort, unless you attain to active passivity, unless you attain to a singing-silence - they look paradoxical - unless you attain to an unmoving dance, you have not attained.

Existence is only in the present. Mind is never in the present. In fact, the moment you are in the present, there is no mind in you, there is great silence. The whole sky of your inner being is without thoughts, without clouds. I call this the state of no-mind. Only in this state of no-mind do you meet existence. And that meeting is the ultimate ecstasy. Once you have tasted it, you will never bother about the future.