Shhhhh! Ah, silence, often so coveted. Sometimes the opposite. Is silence golden? Or is it deadly? Here we present the best quotes and musings we could find on peace and quiet - joyous silence - for your entertainment. We hope you like them, and please share.
Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content: the quiet mind is richer than a crown.
We love the night and its quiet; and there is no night that we love so well as that on which the moon is coffined in clouds.
Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you. The future will take care of itself.
Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received.
Do you want to change the world? Then change yourself first. Do you want to change yourself? Then remain completely silent inside the silence-sea.
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.
It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.
We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.
When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.
I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams.
As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.
No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did.
I go silent so I can write. When my tongue is wagging my fingers are silent.
How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.
The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.
You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.
Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.
I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.
Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation.
Longer Version:
Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait 'til the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.
There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone.
Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.
An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.
Longer Version:
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
Longer Version:
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look,begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary!
Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.
Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
