Stillness Quotes

Feel your emotions,Live true your passions,Keep still your mind.

~ Geoffrey M. Gluckman

Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.

~ David Foster Wallace

The stillness of the waters is only drowned out by the sound of your heartbeat.

~ Anthony T. Hincks

Among my stillness was a pounding heart.

~ Shannon A. Thompson

The girl was a gypsy before an illness took control of her legs, now she watches in awe the world pass by whilst stillness teaches her about inner strength.

~ Nikki Rowe

So it is said, for him who understands Heavenly joy, life is the working of Heaven; death is the transformation of things. In stillness, he and the yin share a single Virtue; in motion, he and the yang share a single flow.

~ Zhuangzi

There is nothing to save, now all is lost,but a tiny core of stillness in the heartlike the eye of a violet.

~ D.h. Lawrence

Why are we afraid of the silence that ensues after our death? Wasn’t it the same silence we endured before birth? Isn’t it the same silence we revel in when we are completely immersed in the present moment? Let us not be afraid.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

I woke up early and took the first train to take me away from the city. The noise and all its people. I was alone on the train and had no idea where I was going, and that’s why I went there. Two hours later we arrived in a small town, one of those towns with one single coffee shop and where everyone knows each other’s name. I walked for a while until I found the water, the most peaceful place I know. There I sat and stayed the whole day, with nothing and everything on my mind, cleaning my head. Silence, I learned, is some times the most beautiful sound.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.

~ Yukio Mishima

Much of our suffering is caused by our false perceptions and attachment to mental images. We assume things to be true without really knowing whether they are true or not, then create a world of hurt for ourselves and others.

~ Joseph P. Kauffman

Our perception is our window to the world, and we need to wipe the dust off of our window often so we can continue to see through it clearly.

~ Joseph P. Kauffman

Many people have failing relationships because they have not really fallen in love with each other, but they have fallen for the mental images they have created of one another. We assume we know our partner, we think about them nonstop, creating many different ideas of who they are, what they like, and how we will be together, then as soon as our partner does something that doesn’t fit with our mental image of them, we become sad, upset, confused, or heart broken. Our partner did not cause our suffering; we caused it, through our false perceptions and mental images.

~ Joseph P. Kauffman

The majority of people in modern society feel separated—from the world, each other, and themselves. This feeling of separation is a resultfrom we humans attempting to separate ourselves from nature, and consequently forgetting who we really are.

~ Joseph P. Kauffman

When we think of something, we create a mental image of it, and our image is then always filtered through our mental perception. We may meet someone one day when they are in a bad mood, we then make a false assumption that this person does not like us. We have created an image of this person, and now every time we meet them, we associate this person with our negative mental image of them. We don’t interact with them as they are in this moment; we interact with how we think they are.

~ Joseph P. Kauffman

We spend so much of our time lost in thought, trying to label everything as isolated objects and events. Though we fail to realize that our thoughts are incapable of defining anything in its totality. We can think about a situation for as long as we want to, but our thoughts will never know the situation exactly as it exists.

~ Joseph P. Kauffman

Don’t ever stop believing in your own personal transformation. It is still happening even on the days you may not realize it or feel like it.

~ Lalah Delia

There was a sudden stillness like the gap between ticks on a clock, but the next tick never coming.

~ Sadie Jones

Time passes so fast. Make time to be still.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

As spiritual searchers we need to become freer and freer of the attachment to our own smallness in which we get occupied with me-me-me. Pondering on large ideas or standing in front of things which remind us of a vast scale can free us from acquisitiveness and competitiveness and from our likes and dislikes. If we sit with an increasing stillness of the body, and attune our mind to the sky or to the ocean or to the myriad stars at night, or any other indicators of vastness, the mind gradually stills and the heart is filled with quiet joy. Also recalling our own experiences in which we acted generously or with compassion for the simple delight of it without expectation of any gain can give us more confidence in the existence of a deeper goodness from which we may deviate. (39)

~ Ravi Ravindra

People who live in the night are acquainted with all kinds of quiet. There’s quiet enough to hear the distant traffic. Quiet enough to hear your breathing. Quiet enough to hear a lover’s heartbeat. There’s please-god-don’t-let-me-die quiet, and can’t-remember-her-name quiet. Is-he-lying quiet and can’t-make-rent quiet. There’s the quiet that inspires poets, and quiet that torments the lonely.

~ Chris Dee

The mind provides a person with the mental fortitude to survive any physical or spiritual crisis. For the present time, I am satisfying myself by building a little shop in the back of my mind, a place where stillness resides and a jangle of thoughts can come and visit. I am building a room of my own, a room that I can retreat to when needed, a place where I am always welcomed regardless of the trappings of this ordinary and finite life. I do not need much as far as earthy rewards, but I certainly will not spurn food, drink, companionship, love, affection, friendship, or other physical, emotional, spiritual, aesthetic, and sensuous pleasures that find their way to my humble doorstep.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I promise from now on to always make time for at least one more. One more chapter before I turn out the light and float off to sleep. One more kiss before I sink into this sea of words and search for meaning to bring back up with me. One more stretch and one more wiggle of my toes before I jump out of bed; and one more moment in meditation before I re-emerge. One more full, deep breath and one more look at the sunset. One more touch, one more smile, one more moment of stillness, of gratitude, of simplicity, of love. From now on, I’ll always make room for one more because you never know when one more is all you’ll ever have.

~ Cristen Rodgers

Sometimes it's hard to look at a flower, when your dying inside.

~ Anthony Liccione

Be calm...calm as a calm lagoon, then you will look beautiful as a beautiful calm lagoon crowned by the Moon and sheltered by the brilliance of the stars reclaiming your royalty of regal life...

~ Oksana Rus

In my silence and stillness, my soul dances with the ecstasy of life.

~ Debasish Mridha

I create beautiful art, so I can look back on the life my body fell short of in such a way that it brings me peace.

~ Nikki Rowe

Sometimes you just have to turn off the lights, sit in the dark, and see what happens inside of you.

~ Adam Oakley

Learn to observe your emotions without needing to act or distract yourself from them. Within that stillness your truest most vulnerable thoughts will arise and it is these thoughts that will show you where your healing work must begin.

~ Alaric Hutchinson

No matter what kind of circumstances come together, if one’s stillness is not shaken and his goal does not change; he is known to have attained religion.

~ Dada Bhagwan

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy. There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

Education will teach you ephemeral things. God will teach you wonders.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Being still does not mean don't move. It means move in peace.

~ E'yen A. Gardner

[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.

~ Wallace Stegner

Within yourself is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.

~ Hermann Hesse

The highest goodness is like water.Water is beneficial to all things but not contend. It stays in places which others despise. Therefore it is near Tao. The weakest things in the world can overmatch the strongest things in the world. Nothing in the world can be compared to water for its weak and yielding nature; yet in attacking the hard and strong nothing proves better than water. For there is no alternative to it. The weak can overcome and the yielding can overcame the hard. This all the world knows but does not practice. This again is the practice of ‘wu-wel’ and nonviolence. Water may be weak, pliable, fluid, but its action is not one of running away from an obstacle. On the contrary, it gives at the point of resistance, envelopes the object and passes beyond it. Ultimately it will wear down the hardest rock. Water is a more telling symbol than land… crossing the river to get to the other side is, again, attaining the state of enlightenment.

~ J.c. Cooper

In the dead of night I stirred. Wakefulness flowed back into me. I was a cup full of sorrow, but that sorrow was stilled, like a pain that abates as long as one does not move.

~ Robin Hobb

When a turbulent mind and wounded heart surrenders to grace, breathing is easy.

~ T.f. Hodge