#silence

I took me to the Banks of the River, and tarried there awhile, as the lowering Sun made one with the Water, giving generously of Itself & its Diverse Colors, in a Splay of Magnificence that preceded a most wonderful Silence. ↗

— George Saunders

#nature #silence #beauty

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

#spirituality #change

Do you want to change the world? Then change yourself first. Do you want to change yourself? Then remain completely silent inside the silence-sea. ↗

— Sri Chinmoy

#silence #change

It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#change #generations #good-people #indifference #repentance

I think we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility. ↗

— Harold Pinter

#communication

The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness. ↗

— Harold Pinter

#communication

No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did. ↗

— Eugenio Montale

#kafka #silence #communication

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another ... ↗

— Maurice Maeterlinck

#communication

I regret to say I'm unable to reply to your unexpressed desires. ↗

— Harryette Mullen

#poetry #regrets #silence #courage

Those who have witnessed executions say there is no sound worse than the weeping of mother watching her son being put to death. They're wrong. There is one sound that is worse. There is silence. ↗

— Carolee Dean

#dean #dylan-dawson #execution #silence #take-me-there