Quotes about silence

Except for cases of pathological incapacity, one can and must communicate, and thereby contribute in a useful and easy way to the peace of others and oneself, because silence, the absence of signals, is itself a signal, but an ambiguous one, and ambiguity generates anxiety and suspicion. To say that it is impossible to communicate is false; one always can.

Sit and be still

until in the time

of no rain you hear

beneath the dry wind's

commotion in the trees

the sound of flowing

water among the rocks,

a stream unheard before,

and you are where

breathing is prayer.

Ask the world to reveal its quietude —

not the silence of machines when they are still,

but the true quiet by which birdsongs,

trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms

become what they are, and are nothing else.

And isn't it usually so, that lovers who share their daily lives with each other gradually find they need to put very little into words?

In such times, if you want neither to lie nor to wound, you are reduced to being silent.

Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet?

Here is the desert. In this silence, everything speaks to me: and in your noise, everything falls silent.

When I speak, you must not listen to the words, my dear. Listen to the Silence.

Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.

In Vanya's family, silence had never meant surrender, only tactical retreat.

We come from a generation of people who need their TV or stereo playing all the time. These people so scared of silence. These soundaholics, these quietophobics.

These people so scared of silence. These are my neighbors. These sound-oholics. These quiet-ophobics.