Quotes about Silence

You know, I have found out in the course of a long public life that the things I did not say never hurt me.

How many others suffered in silence, too ashamed and too afraid to speak about their pain? The world wouldn't let them grieve for children they had aborted. How could they when the rhetoric said there was no child? How does one grieve what doesn't exist? No one wanted to admit the truth.

Oh, Lord, sometimes I know how David feels. Where are You when I need You? Why do You seem so far away? Why are You so silent? I can count my blessings from morning to night. I can remember all the things You've done for me from the time I was a little child. I remember and I cry out to You, and You're nowhere to be found. I have lost my joy.

It was as though her tongue were a heavy weight in her mouth, and now her heart was even heavier for having kept silent.

When a wise man does not understand, he says: I do not understand. The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom.

Be deaf! You do not need to hear or, hearing, you do not need to remember. How soothing it is to forget. And how dangerous

Let God leave us! Let us grow up. Let us walk forward on our own. Because we need the silence of the holy: we need the sacred and equally we need its maddening silence. And in the curious privacy and relief of that silence we can go out into the chaos and commit a thousand acts of minor and gleeful splendor all our own. If it's our tragedy to be left by God, then let it also be our luck.

She gazed right through it to the future, another time and place without this jangling cascade of arbitrary noise.

All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men remain silent and do nothing.

The name of God is so awe-full, so unpronounceable, that it has never been used by any of his creatures. Indeed, it is said that if, inadvertently, the great and terrible name of God should be spoken, the universe would explode.

Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer.

Be silent before God and let Him bless you.