Silence is an endangered quantity in our time... Silence, embraced, stuns with its presence, its pregnant reality—a reality that does not negate reason and argument, but puts them in their place. — Krista Tippett
The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. — Sylvia Plath
Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time. — Thomas Carlyle
The silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind. — R. S. Thomas
Short Long Silence Quotes
The loudest noise in the world is silence. — Thelonious Monk
Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak. — Elizabeth Bowen
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute. — Josh Billings
Silence is one of the great arts of conversation. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
A season of silence is the best preparation for speech with God. — Samuel Chadwick
Silence is a statement that is open to gross misinterpretation. — Craig Reucassel
A Conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words. — John Lennon
Silence is more than just a lack of words. — Egyptian Proverbs
The silence sings. It is musical. I remember a night when it was audible. I heard the unspeakable. — Henry David Thoreau
Silence is argument carried out by other means. — Che Guevara
Long Silence Image Quotes
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
That Long Silence Quotes
Even if I am simply one more woman laying one more brick in the foundation of a new and more humane world, it is enough to make me rise eagerly from my bed each morning and face the challenge of breaking the historic silence that has held women captive for so long. — Judy Chicago
The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world. — Michel-Rolph Trouillot
So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public. — Marquis De Sade
Silence is better than bullshit.
I feel that silence is the greatest word, ever. When you don't talk, people begin to read things into you or you become what they long for. When you don't talk, you almost become the mirror image of the other person. — Nicolas Winding Refn
"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully. "Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever." "And he has Brain." "Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain." There was a long silence. "I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything." — Benjamin Hoff
If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that. — Eddie Vedder
Your silence gives consent.
Somewhere we know that without silence, words lose their meaning. — Henri Nouwen
I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently. — Herta Muller
The reverberation often exceeds through silence the sound that sets it off; the reaction occasionally outdoes by way of repose the event that stimulated it; and the past not uncommonly takes a while to happen, and some long time to figure out. — Ken Kesey
I have always longed to be part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water; to return to town a stranger. Wandering flushes a glory that fades with arrival. — J. A. Baker
Time For Silence Quotes
I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. — Toni Morrison
For all evils there are two remedies - time and silence. — Alexandre Dumas
Work hard in silence, let your success be the noise
Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. — Christopher Hitchens
Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over. — Octavia Butler
Silence is like a cradle holding our endeavors and our will; a silent spaciousness sustains us in our work and at the same time connects us to larger worlds that, in the busyness of our daily struggle to achieve, we have not yet investigated. Silence is the soul's break for freedom. — David Whyte
Silence is a source of great strength.
There is nothing like lying flat on your back on the deck, alone except for the helmsman aft at the wheel, silence except for the lapping of the sea against the side of the ship. At that time you can be equal to Ulysses and brother to him. — Errol Flynn
Let us look for secret things somewhere in the world on the blue shore of silence or where the storm has passed rampaging like a train. There the faint signs are left, coins of time and water, debris ,celestial ash and the irreplaceable rapture of sharing in the labour of soitude in the sand. — Pablo Neruda
If you make time for silence, the sacred will unfold. — Rod Stryker
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time. — Thomas Carlyle
Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap. — Hildegard of Bingen
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth. — Mahatma Gandhi
To sit in solemn silence on a dull, dark dock in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block. — W. S. Gilbert
Silence is a strange thing to us who live: we desire it, we fear it, we worship it, we hate it. There is a divinity about cats, as long as they are silent: the silence of swans gives them an air of legend. — Keith Douglas
For it is the fate of a woman Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Runnng through caverns of darkness. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Our view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin [of silence], so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. the spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. We can grieve in tears or in meditative silence, in prayer or in song. In touching the pain of recent and long-held griefs, we come face to face with our genuine human vulnerability, with helplessness and hopelessness. These are the storm clouds of the heart. — Jack Kornfield
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. — Albert Camus
If all the skies were sunshine Our faces would be fain To feel once more upon them The cooling splash of rain. If all the world were music, Our hearts would often long For one sweet strain of silence, To break the endless song If life were always merry, Our souls would seek relief, And rest from weary laughter In the quiet arms of grief. — Henry Van Dyke
Silence is never more golden than when you hold it long enough to get all the facts before you speak. — Unknown
I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. — C. S. Lewis
Compared to men writers of like distinction and years of life, few women writers have had lives of unbroken productivity, or leave behind a 'body of work.' Early beginnings, then silence; or clogged late ones (foreground silences); long periods between books (hidden silences); characterize most of us. — Tillie Olsen
I had three choices: to conform to my own beliefs, which meant death; complete silence, which meant another kind of death; to pay a tribute, a bribe. I chose the third solution by writing The Long Winter. — Ismail Kadaré
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Where never the lark, nor even eagle flew- And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high, untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God. — John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
The long silences need to be loved, perhaps more than the words which arrive to describe them in time. — Franz Wright
Within each of us there is a silence as vast as the universe. We long for it. We can return to it. — Jack Kornfield
If I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to. — Richard Rohr
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Some people speak and sing and walk and sit and sleep and silence their homesickness, for a long time, and to no avail. Some say that over time homesickness loses its specific content, that it starts to smolder and only then becomes all-consuming, because it’s no longer focused on a concrete home. I am one of the people who say that. — Herta Muller
and the two of them loved each other for a long time in silence without making love again. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I was sitting in my office when someone called to tell me two light planes had collided with the World Trade Centre. I turned on my television, before long there was this procession of people of all kinds, walking up the street. What I remember most was the silence of that crowd; there was no sound. — Tom Wolfe
I'm not a great one for chatting people up, because it's phony. I don't want people to feel at ease. You want a bit of edge. There are quite long, agonized silences. I love it. Something strange might happen. I mean, taking photographs is a very nasty thing to do. It's very cruel. — Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon
ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, 'What is the answer?' Then, after a long silence, 'What is the question?' Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks. — Frederick Buechner
True friendship resists time, distance and silence. — Isabel Allende
What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence. — Cesare Pavese
Silence is the root of everything. If you spiral into its void a hundred voices will thunder messages you long to hear. — Rumi
Prayer is no fitful, short-lived thing. It is no voice crying unheard and unheeded in the silence. It is a voice which goes into God's ear, and it lives as long as God's ear is open to holy pleas, as long as God's heart is alive to holy things. — Edward McKendree Bounds
The leader teaches more through being than through doing. The quality of one's silence conveys more than long speeches. — John Heider
By silencing the mind, we can experience real peace. As long as various kinds of thoughts agitate the brain, we don't experience 100 percent peace. — Henepola Gunaratana
There is an old story about the boy at Eton who committed suicide. The other boys in his house were gathered together and asked if any of them could suggest a reason for the tragedy. After a long silence a small boy in the front put up his hand: 'Could it have been the food, sir? — Auberon Waugh
It was one of those problematic occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying isolated things like, "Well, isn't this nice. — Terry Pratchett
there's time for laughing and there's time for crying— for hoping for despair for peace for longing —a time for growing and a time for dying: a night for silence and a day for singing but more than all(as all your more than eyes tell me)there is a time for timelessness — E. E. cummings
Since long I've held silence a remedy for harm. — Aeschylus
Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story. — Bob Newhart
The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,
Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt. — D. H. Lawrence
Something unpronounceable followed by a long silence points out my life is becoming a landscape. — Mary Ruefle
I remember having a friend overnight, and lots of giggling after the lights were out. And seemingly long silences followed by “Are you asleep yet?” and, sometimes, some pretty serious discussions about God and Life. — Joe Brainard
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of long silence quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about long silence to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of long silence quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
