Quotes about silence

People who make no noise are dangerous.

Don't let your corrosive grief

devour you in silence.

All things were full of horror and affright,

And dreadful even the silence of the night.

Amid the friendly silence of the peaceful moon.

But above all, silence is the dissipation of our language. ... In the silence of a walk, when you end up losing the use of words because by then you are doing nothing but walk, ... in that silence you hear better, because you are finally hearing what has no vocation to be retranslated, recoded, reformatted.

Then there’s the silence of tough summer afternoon walks across the flank of a mountain, stony paths, exposed to an uncompromising sun. Blinding, mineral, shattering silence. You hear nothing but the quiet crunch of stones underfoot. An implacable, definitive silence, like a transparent death. Sky of a perfectly detached blue. You advance with eyes down, reassuring yourself sometimes with a silent mumbling. Cloudless sky, limestone slabs filled with presence: silence nothing can sidestep. Silence fulfilled, vibrant immobility, tensed like a bow.

[He] got up out of bed and stuck his head out of his little window as far as he could. It was utterly quiet. But for the first time this quiet failed to give him a sense of peace-the world wasn't quiet, it was speechless. Involuntarily he pulled his hands out of the moonlight which, like no other light, has the faculty of clinging to every surface and penetrating every crevice. (chapter I p60)

The silence was very intense, like the hush that used to trouble her mind when she was the first to wake up on Saturday mornings. (p97)

Silence. Stillness. To give her soul a chance to attend its own affairs at its own level.

The next day as he rode on toward the bluffs, Stace Red Hawk felt a renewal of faith, the kind of feeling that comes to a man in silence, when he takes notice that a tree is older than himself, and that it will remain when he is gone. (p 230)

[He] held his daughter's hand. They were praying. None of them spoke. No one had to. The silence was stronger than words. (p 202)

A teacher comes, they say, when you are ready. And if you ignore its presence, it will speak to you more loudly. But you have to be quiet to hear.