Mute Quotes - Page 4

• All things with which we deal preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Weed, Spring, Rain

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.157

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I need not shout my faith. Thrice eloquent Are quiet trees and the green listening sod; Hushed are the stars, whose power is never spent; The hills are mute: yet how they speak of God!

  Charles Hanson Towne

  Stars, Tree, Listening

  Charles Hanson Towne, “Silence”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I was from Cupid's passions free, my Muse was mute and wrote no elegy.

  Ovid

  Passion, Muse, Cupid

  12 Copy quote

• All I ever wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing and then made me mute.

  Peter Shaffer

  God, Longing, Made

  "Fictional character: Antonio Salieri". "Amadeus", 1984.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sin we commit against each other as women is lack of support. We hurt. We hurt each other. We hide. We project. We become mute or duplicitous, and we fester like boiling water until one day we erupt like a geyser. Do we forget we unravel in grief?

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Hurt, Grief, Water

  Terry Tempest Williams (2012). “When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice”, p.181, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute.

  Tobsha Learner

  Past, Men, Blind

  4 Copy quote

• Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Cutting, Lakes, Sea

  7 Copy quote

• There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hallucinations, Sound, Tests

  Prejudices, Third Series ch. 3 (1922)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Parent, Forever, Sound

  8 Copy quote

• The moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  New Experiences, Silence, Feelings

  Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Betz, Will Stone (2012). “Rilke in Paris”, p.51, Hesperus Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was over twenty before I discovered that the past was neither quiet nor mute.

  Eduardo Galeano

  Education, Past, Museums

  14 Copy quote

• Truth! why shall every wretch of letters Dare to speak truth against his betters! Let ragged virtue stand aloof, Nor mutter accents of reproof; Let ragged wit a mute become, When wealth and power would have her dumb.

  Charles Churchill

  Truth, Dumb, Letters

  Charles Churchill, James Hannay (1866). “The poetical works of Charles Churchill, with notes by W. Tooke. with a memoir by J.L. Hannay”, p.116

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing is more destructive of human dignity than a rule which imposes a mute and blind obedience.

  Anthony Eden

  Dignity, Blind, Obedience

  17 Copy quote

• Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Teacher, Silence, Lessons

  15 Copy quote

• Hail, mute devil! You are the most intense animal. An eternal mystic of the fleshly inferno.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Animal, Devil, Intense

  4 Copy quote

• Most history is a record of the triumphs, disasters, and follies of top people. The black hole in it is the way of life of mute, inglorious men and women who make no nuisance of themselves in the world.

  Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel

  Men, People, History

  4 Copy quote

• Love is the possibility of possibilities. Its farthest reach is beyond us, no matter how long we love or how much. It will always remain the mute mystery to whose ecstasy and ache we can only surrender with a yes.

  David Richo

  Love, Long, Matter

  David Richo (2002). “How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving”, p.1, Shambhala Publications

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Will there never come a season Which shall rid us from the curse? Of a prose which knows no reason And an unmelodious verse: When the world shall cease to wonder At the genius of an Ass, And a boy's eccentric blunder Shall not bring success to pass: When mankind shall be delivered From the clash of magazines, And the inkstand shall be shivered Into countless smithereens: When there stands a muzzled stripling, Mute, beside a muzzled bore: When the Rudyards cease from Kipling And the Haggards Ride no more.

  James Kenneth Stephen

  Boys, World, Eccentric

  James Kenneth Stephen, “To R. K.”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are chords in the human heart- strange, varying strings- which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.

  Charles Dickens

  Inspirational, Heart, Passionate

  Charles Dickens (1863). “The Old Curiosity Shop”, p.430

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I stand alone, It does not mean, I am any less a Human, If my arms do not hold another, It does not mean, They are incapable of holding, If my tongue is silent, And never speaks the words of Love, It does not mean, That it will be mute, When the time comes, That the words can sincerely be spoken. And just because the World, Has not yet introduced, The one that will share my Life, It certainly does not mean, That I am incapable, Of Loving.

  Javan

  Mean, Doe, World

  17 Copy quote

• I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate, I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate. I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned, Since from myself another self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.

  Elizabeth I

  Hate, Lying, Grieving

  c.1582 'On Monsieur's Departure'.

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Little Mute Boy The little boy was looking for his voice. (The king of the crickets had it.) In a drop of water the little boy was looking for his voice. I do not want it for speaking with; I will make a ring of it so that he may wear my silence on his little finger In a drop of water the little boy was looking for his voice. (The captive voice, far away, put on a cricket's clothes.) Translated by William S. Merwin

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Kings, Boys, Voice

  Federico Garcia Lorca, “The Little Mute Boy”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I would be mute, beautiful, changless as the earth for you. I would be your memory, without age, always innocent, always waiting in the King's white house. I would do that for you and no other man inthe relm. But it would be a lie and I will do anything but lie to you - I swear that.

  Patricia A. McKillip

  Beautiful, Kings, Memories

  4 Copy quote

• For a time they confronted each other like two mute unspeaking forts.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Two, Forts

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.100, Open Road Media

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds; for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Odds, Vegetables, Victory

  8 Copy quote