Silence Quotes

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like silence, listening to silence.

~ Thomas Hood

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

~ Octavio Paz

I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods.

~ Georg Trakl

For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it.

~ Martin Buber

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

~ Khalil Gibran

Silence is a source of great strength.

~ Lao Tzu

Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense.

~ Mary Wollstonecraft

African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.

~ Wangari Maathai

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What I am looking for... is an immobile movement, something which would be the equivalent of what is called the eloquence of silence, or what St. John of the Cross, I think it was, described with the term 'mute music'.

~ Joan Miró

I began observing, making paintings of my surroundings, taking a vow of silence, listening, composing music, writing, and making time for formal education. Then I started telling stories.

~ John Francis

Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

~ Marcel Marceau

You can never get silence anywhere nowadays, have you noticed?

~ Bryan Ferry

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

~ Helen Keller

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

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

First and foremost, the monk should own nothing in this world, but he should have as his possessions solitude of the body, modesty of bearing, a modulated tone of voice, and a well-ordered manner of speech. He should be without anxiety as to his food and drink, and should eat in silence.

~ Saint Basil

You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence.

~ William S. Burroughs

I think we all have our own personality, unique and distinctive, and at the same time, I think that our own unique and distinctive personality blends with the wind, with the footsteps in the street, with the noises around the corner, and with the silence of memory, which is the great producer of ghosts.

~ Octavio Paz

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

~ Thomas Carlyle

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

~ Mark Helprin

I can hear the roar of women's silence.

~ Thomas Sankara

Silence is an ornament for women.

~ Sophocles

Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.

~ Natalie Goldberg

Silence is true wisdom's best reply.

~ Euripides

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

~ Martin Luther King

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.

~ Martin Luther King

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

~ Haile Selassie

As an immigrant, I appreciate, far more than the average American, the liberties we have in this country. Silence is a big enemy of morality. I don't want our blunders in history to get repeated.

~ Gloria Estefan

A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.

~ Phillips Brooks

One of the greatest attacks of the enemy is to make you busy, to make you hurried, to make you noisy, to make you distracted, to fill the people of God and the Church of God with so much noise and activity that there is no room for prayer. There is no room for being alone with God. There is no room for silence. There is no room for meditation.

~ Paul Washer

Silence is the pause in me when I am near to God.

~ Arvo Pärt

I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.

~ Elie Wiesel

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

~ Khalil Gibran

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

~ Martin Luther King

When political leaders fail to denounce anti-Semitic violence and slurs, the void is not only demoralizing to the victims, but silence actually enables the wrongdoing. Silence by elected officials in particular conveys approval - or at least acquiescence - and can contribute to a climate of fear and a sense of vulnerability.

~ Chris Smith

Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.

~ Margaret Sanger

When I talked to my medical friends about the strange silence on this subject in American medical magazines and textbooks, I gained the impression that here was a subject tainted with Socialism or with feminine sentimentality for the poor.

~ Alice Hamilton

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

~ Aldous Huxley

There are a group of people who would like to silence everybody and have everybody go along to get along, but that's not going to be very helpful for us in the long run, in terms of solving our problems. And somebody has to be courageous enough to actually stand up to, you know, the bullies.

~ Ben Carson