Silent Quotes - Page 13

• Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.

  Anton Chekhov

  Children, Expression, Silence

  "Enemies". Short story by Anton Chekhov, 1887.

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• They were wrestling with canvases, using violent colors and huge brush strokes. I arrived with gray, silent, sober, oppressed paintings. One critic said they were paintings that thought.

  Antoni Tapies

  Wrestling, Color, Painting

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• Currents of energy shimmer through our bodies. Like shooting stars, we rocket through spacious stillness. But this silent, unmoving background is nothing like the granite ideas we use trying to take root in groundless soil.

  Anthony Lawlor

  Stars, Ideas, Roots

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• Synonyms know each other like old colleagues, like a set of friends who've seen the world together. They swap stories, reminisce about their origins and forget that though they are similar, they are entirely different, and though they share a certain set of attributes, one can never be the other. Because a quiet night is not the same as a silent one, a firm man is not the same as a steady one, and a bright light is not the same as a brilliant one because the way they wedge themselves into a sentence changes everything.

  Tahereh Mafi

  Night, Men, Light

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• With awe, around these silent walks I tread; These are the lasting mansions of the dead.

  George Crabbe

  Awe, Walks, Lasting

  'The Library' (1808) l. 105

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• The moon ... is a mad woman holding up her dress So that her white belly shines. Haughty, Impregnable, Ridiculous, Silent and white as a debauched queen.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Queens, Moon, White

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• What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.

  Richard Wagner

  Song, Other Worlds, Humanity

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• In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Peace, History, Historical

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, p.210, Random House

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• Flowers rejoice when night is done, Lift their heads to greet the sun; Sweetest looks and odours raise, In a silent hymn of praise.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Flower, Night, Hymns

  Henry Van Dyke (1920). “The Poems of Henry Van Dyke”

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• Meditation is a silent way of looking at resistance. You're not running away from it -- you're sitting with the resistance ... basically you're trying to follow the resistance. And I think that's very interesting.

  Rodney Yee

  Running, Thinking, Interesting

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• Faded smiles oft linger in the face, While grief's first flakes fall silent on the heart!

  Alfred Austin

  Grief, Fall, Heart

  Alfred Austin (1896). “Days of the Year: A Poetic Calendar from the Works of A. Austin”

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• Of course it's also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.

  Michael Pollan

  Cereal, Lucky Charms, Puff

  "Unhappy Meals". www.nytimes.com. January 28, 2007.

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• Why to mute fish should'st thou thyself discoverAnd not to me, thy no less silent lover?

  Abraham Cowley

  Lovers, Mute, Should

  Abraham Cowley (1779). “The Works of the English Poets. With Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, by Samuel Johnson”, p.320

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• Awake, awake, my Lyre!And tell thy silent master's humble taleIn sounds that may prevail;Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire:Though so exalted sheAnd I so lowly beTell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.

  Abraham Cowley

  Humble, Inspire, May

  Abraham Cowley, “A Supplication”

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• It will often be a question when a man is or is not wise in advancing unpalatable opinions, or in preaching heresies; but it can never be a question that a man should be silent if unprepared to speak the truth as he conceives it.

  George Henry Lewes

  Wise, Men, Often Is

  "The Principles of Success in Literature". The Fortnightly Review, Volume 1, www.gutenberg.org. 1865.

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• No woman has ever stepped on Little America - and we have found it to be the most silent and peaceful place in the world.

  Richard E. Byrd

  America, Peaceful, World

  The Oakland Tribune, November 26, 1955.

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• It is forgivable to say nothing out of ignorance; it's inexcusable to remain silent once awareness dawns.

  Joshua Ferris

  Ignorance, Dawn, Awareness

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• As you become more rooted inside -- as you drink from this silent stream of life that runs beneath the surface of everything -- as you live from that depth of your own being more and more, then you’ll be able to rise taller and stronger in this world; more than you may have ever thought possible.

  Derek Rydall

  Running, Stronger, Depth

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• While Frazier was a man of few words / Ali was a world of mouth / but he found his place in history / Now his heart can express him well / Joe Frazier was a silent warrior / whom Ali silently admired / One could not rise without the other

  Muhammad Ali

  Heart, Warrior, Men

  Muhammad Ali, Hana Yasmeen Ali (2013). “The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey”, p.114, Simon and Schuster

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• Man ever talks, and Man ever dreams Of better days that are yet to be, After glittering goal, that distant gleams, Running and racing untiringly. The worldly may grow old and young as it will, But the Hope of man is Improvement still. Hope bears him into life in her arms, She flutters around the boy's young bloom, The soul of youth with her magic warms, Nor rests with age in the silent tomb; For ends man his weary course at the grave, There plants he Hope o'er his ashes to wave.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Running, Dream, Hope

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• I might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive catalogue?

  George Eliot

  Spring, Eye, Would Be

  George Eliot (1862). “Adam Bede ... Tenth edition”, p.71

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• Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Exercise, Discovery, Long

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.3588, Delphi Classics

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• Now we will no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact, the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Enemy, Culture

  "Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, transl. by Helen Zimmern, Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself"/ aphorism 633, 1909-1913.

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• Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs — To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind.

  John Updike

  Nature, Men, Echoes

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• Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves the feet of angels bright; unseen they pour blessing, and joy without ceasing, on each bud and blossom, and each sleeping bosom.

  William Blake

  Moving, Sleep, Angel

  William Blake, Andrew Lincoln (1991). “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”, p.162, Princeton University Press

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