Silence Quotes

Why are men so noisy during the liturgies while Christ's prayer was silent? The words of the Son of God come from the heart, and the heart is silent. Why do we not know how to speak with a silent heart? The heart of Jesus does not speak. It radiates with love because its language comes from the divine depths.

~ Robert Sarah

There is a great risk that Christians may become idolaters if they lose the meaning of silence. Our words inebriate us; they confine us to what is created. Bewitched and imprisoned by the noise of human speech, we run the risk of designing worship to our specifications, a god in our own image. Words bring with them the temptation of the golden calf! Only silence leads man beyond words, to the mystery, to worship in spirit and in truth. Silence is a form of mystagogy; it brings us into the mystery without spoiling it.

~ Robert Sarah

As a result of this greed for power, the poor is not only silenced but also oppressed.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Take a step towards actualizing the very thing you are persuaded for and do not allow injustice to silence your voice.

~ Sunday Adelaja

It is those that are insulted by injustice that will refuse to be silenced.

~ Sunday Adelaja

The people’s silence is a tyrant’s greatest advocate. The less captives talked, the less they knew; the less they knew, the more they feared; and the more they feared, the more easily others could manipulate them to their own ends, the more easily the captives could be controlled.

~ John Kramer

The more you know, the less you talk. The less you talk, the more you know.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Some of the most powerful speeches I have given have been delivered in the dedicated silence of my actions.

~ Steve Maraboli

In Paris, where raillery is so quick to throw emotion out the window, silence, in a roomful of clever people after a story, is the most flattering of all marks of success

~ Jules Barbey D'aurevilly

Gloating is a superficial glowing, floating is an idle flowing, and bloatedness is the paralysis of blowing up; because silent movement results in loud victories.

~ Criss Jami

When clouds of pain loom in the skyWhen a shadow of sadness flickers byWhen a tear finds its way to the eyeWhen fear keeps the loneliness aliveI try and console my heartWhy is it that you cry? I askThis is only what life impartsThese deep silences withinHave been handed out to all by timeEveryone’s story has a little sorrowEveryone’s share has a little sunshineNo need for water in your eyesEvery moment can be a new lifeWhy do you let them pass you by?Oh heart, why is it that you cry?

~ Javed Akhtar

I had a day when I was busy in the world, where the activity created a turmoil on the surface of my consciousness like waves on the surface of the ocean, which made it difficult to see through the waves to the inner silence. It reminded me that we need to develop both the capacity to use the mind when engaged in activity and social relations, and to be able to let go of the activity and to come in contact with the deep inner silence. The relationship between being active in the world and in social relations and the inner silence is like the relationship between the waves on the surface of the ocean and the deep inner silence on the bottom of the ocean.

~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Silence can be lovely or disturbing, depending on the source.

~ Melody Lee

Her silence should be feared more than her words.

~ Piper Payne

Sometimes we find the sweetest solidarity in the midst of solitude.

~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

I wish not to tell you how I feel,I choose silence so that you leave,Kiss me goodbye and set me free...

~ Sanhita Baruah

There is nothing more beautiful than the silence of nature.

~ Nina Hrusa

The best lessons of life are learnt in silence and solitude.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Silence doesn’t mean no activity; it means highly synchronized actions, much like the work of a well-tuned motor. More noise and vibration never assure better engine performance; indeed, quite the opposite.

~ Uday Mukerji

Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.

~ Haruki Murakami

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. Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: Sprecfien ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.

~ Thomas Carlyle

My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.

~ Markus Zusak

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

~ Will Rogers

You gotta be careful: don't say a word to nobody about nothing anytime ever.

~ Johnny Depp

Now listen, we need to be quiet as mice. No, quieter than that. As quiet as . . . as . . .” “Dead mice?” Reynie suggested. “Perfect,” said Kate with an approving nod. “As quiet as dead mice.

~ Trenton Lee Stewart

A very unwise man once said, “He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.” A very annoyed woman once said, “He who does not want to communicate will never enjoy their silence for very long.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Om is not just a sound or vibration. It is not just a symbol. It is the entire cosmos, whatever we can see, touch, hear and feel. Moreover, it is all that is within our perception and all that is beyond our perception. It is the core of our very existence. If you think of Om only as a sound, a technique or a symbol of the Divine, you will miss it altogether. Om is the mysterious cosmic energy that is the substratum of all the things and all the beings of the entire universe. It is an eternal song of the Divine. It is continuously resounding in silence on the background of everything that exists.

~ Amit Ray

The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded in the egoism I was supposed to transcend. Now I was beginning to understand that a silence that is not clamorous with vexation and worried self-regard can become part of the texture of your mind, can seep into you, moment by moment, and gradually change you.

~ Karen Armstrong

Without silence, there cannot be any real appreciation in life, which is as delicate in its inner fabric as a closed rosebud.

~ Deepak Chopra

How often do we talk just to fill up the quiet space? How often do we waste our breath talking about nonsense?

~ Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

Talking empties you of the noisy silence within.

~ Ashlecka Aumrivani

...the mind is just as immeasurable as the vast universe. An integral being settles his mind just as the vast universe settles itself. He unites his mind with the unnameable Subtle Origin of the multi-universe in which there is no past, present or future. This is how an integral being deals with his mind.

~ Lao Tzu

In the silence of children, God exists, directing their thoughts and sending us subtle reminders as not forgetting gratitude even in the littlest of things.

~ Chinonye J. Chidolue

I long for the day when I hear the musicwithout any song.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Silence is a frightening thing. Silences leaves us at the mercy of the noise within us. We hear the fears that need to be faced. We hear, then, the angers that need to be cooled. We hear the emptiness that needs to be filled. We hear the cries for humility and reconciliation and centeredness. We hear ambition and arrogance and attitudes of uncaring awash in the shallows of the soul. Silence demands answers. Silence invites us to depth. Silence heals what hoarding and running will not touch.

~ Joan D. Chittister

and when we speak we are afraidour words will not be heardnor welcomedbut when we are silentwe are still afraidSo it is better to speakrememberingwe were never meant to survive

~ Audre Lorde

Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.

~ James Joyce

I’ll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.

~ Mark Lawrence

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.

~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart