Silent Quotes - Page 17

• That prayer which does not succeed in moderating our wishes--in changing the passionate desire into still submission, the anxious, tumultuous expectation into silent surrender--is no true prayer, and proves that we have not the spirit of true prayer.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Prayer, Passionate Desire, Expectations

  Frederick William Robertson (1866). “Sermons ...”, p.33

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• I'm weary of my lonely but
  And of its blasted tree,
  The very lake is like my lot,
  So silent constantly--
  I've liv'd amid the forest gloom
  Until I almost fear--
  When will the thrilling voices come
  My spirit thirsts to hear?

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Country, Lonely, Voice

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• The nunneries of silent nooks, the murmured longing of the wood.

  James Russell Lowell

  Woods, Longing

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• Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men.

  Plato

  Truth, Men, Order

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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• My great wish is to go on in a strict but silent performance of my duty; to avoid attracting notice, and to keep my name out of the newspapers.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Names, Wish, Goes On

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States”, p.442

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• Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Happiness, Influence, Indolence

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1786-1787”, p.265, Cosimo, Inc.

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• there is no noise louder than a silent phone.

  Lois Wyse

  Phones, Waiting, Noise

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• Silent people are dangerous; others are not so.
  [Fr., Les gens sans bruit sont dangereux;
  Il n'en est pas ainsi des autres.]

  Jean de La Fontaine

  People, Silence, Dangerous

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• I do not know if Alice in Wonderland was an original story-I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it-but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'-is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.

  Lewis Carroll

  Believe, Flower, Book

  Lewis Carroll (2015). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Other Tales”, p.208, Race Point Pub

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• I prefer silent prudence to loquacious folly.
  [Lat., Malo indisertam prudentiam, quam loquacem stultitiam.]

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Prudence, Folly

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• While strength and years permit, endure labor; soon bent old age will come with silent foot.
  [Lat., Dum vires annique sinunt, tolerate labores.
  Jam veniet tacito curva senecta pede.]

  Ovid

  Feet, Years, Age

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• It is but a small merit to observe silence, but it is a grave fault to speak of matters on which we should be silent.

  Ovid

  Silence, Matter, Faults

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• Work while your strength and years permit you; crooked age will by-and-by come upon you with silent foot.

  Ovid

  Years, Feet, Age

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• Time is the silent, never-resting thing ... rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Rushing, Swim, Rolling

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• Unity, agreement, is always silent or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Agreement, Unity, Discord

  Thomas Carlyle (1847). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished”, p.381

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• The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world,--words with little meaning, actions with little worth,--one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Silence, World

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.246, Lulu.com

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• When I gaze into the stars, they look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent spaces, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man. Thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up by time, and there remains no record of them any more. Yet Arcturus and Orion, Sirius and Pleiades, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar!

  Thomas Carlyle

  Stars, Eye, Men

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• How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality,--a place, a country, a local habitation! how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us! Here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beautified and canonized forever, with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places,--rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others,--where distress or death came once, and since then dwells forevermore.

  Washington Irving

  Summer, Country, Dark

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• A great silence has descended on me for the last six months. I am as silent as an Arab in the desert, as dry, thirsty, and full of wonder and rumours which do not materialize into camels or travellers at all, but just vanish into the silent spaces from where they came. I expect this is a good thing though it is extremely irritating - the brink of a voice and never a voice.

  May Sarton

  Voice, Space, Silence

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• [To Jean Harlow, who repeatedly mispronounced her first name:] No, no, Jean. The t is silent, as in Harlow.

  Margot Asquith

  Names, Firsts, Wit

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• Self-loathing is the silent hemorrhaging of the soul. You don't feel or see the life force fleeing until it's not longer there, and then, of course, it's too late.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Self, Soul, Loathing

  Sarah Ban Breathnach (1999). “Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self”, G K Hall & Company

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• So the false spider, when her nets are spread, deep ambushed in her silent den does lie.

  John Dryden

  Lying, Doe, Spiders

  John Dryden, Paul Hammond, David Hopkins (2007). “Dryden: Selected Poems”, p.96, Pearson Education

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• A well-bred youth neither speakes of himselfe, nor being spoken to is silent.

  George Herbert

  Youth, Wells

  George Herbert (1874). “The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose”, p.328

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• [On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.

  Dorothy Parker

  Should Have, Missing, Way

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• Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always one and the same habit.

  Ben Jonson

  Heaven, Ancient, Habit

  Ben Jonson, William Gifford (1816). “The Works: In 9 Volumes. ... containing Underwoods, translations, &c. Discoveries. English grammar. Jonsonus viribus”, p.206

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