Quotes about Silence

God's first language is Silence. Everything else is a translation.

God invented silence to fill the space when beauty, wonder and love go beyond words.

 We will have to repent not merely for vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

It is very hard to live with silence.  The real silence is death and this is terrible.  To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert.  You do not go to the desert to find identity, but to loses it, to lose your personality, to be anonymous.  You make yourself void.  You become silence.  You become more silent than the silence around you.  And then something extraordinary happens: you hear silence speak.

"Within each of us, there is a silence, a silence as vast as the universe. And when we experience that silence, we remember who we are..."

Build your inner environment. Practice Silence! I remember the
wonderful discipline of the Great Ones. When we used to talk and
chatter, they would say: "Go back into your inner castle." It was
very hard to comprehend then, but now I understand the way of peace

We believe profoundly in silence—the sign of a perfect equilibrium.
Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit.
Those who can preserve their selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the
storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a
ripple upon the shining pool—those, in the mind of the person of
nature, possess the ideal attitude and conduct of life.
If you ask us, `What is silence?' we will answer, `It is the
Great Mystery. The holy silence is God's voice.'
If you ask, `What are the fruits of silence?' we will
answer, `They are self-control, true courage of endurance, patience,
dignity, and reverence. Silence is the cornerstone of character.'

I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the
heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence—we need to
listen to God because it's not what we say but what He says to us and
through us that matters.

Every painful memory is also a painful confusion of perception that will never be solved.  The only choice is to move on.

Every word is like an unnecessary  stain on silence and nothingness.

Do I wrongly avoid silence, distance and obstacles? 
The silence of God is never indifference, 
Distance from God is never separation,
And obstacles back to God are never permanent 

Shut UP! An Ancient Mantra for Complete Happiness!  The Simple Truth Your Guru, Therapist and Grandmother Forgot To Tell You!  Shut Up! and Be Happy!

When a fool is silent, he too is counted among the wise.

The beauty of a piece of music is not in its technique but in the Soul of its creator; nor is it in the
sound vibrations of the piece but in the silence of the Light from which the sound springs.

"The place to find is within yourself."

Gratitude creates a silence from which truth can arise.

I've been thinking about something for a long time, and I keep noticing that most human speech—if not all human speech—is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about presence and absence. When we breath in, our bodies are filled with nutrients and nourishment. Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush; our bones get harder—they get compacted. Our muscles get toned and we feel very present when we're breathing in. The problem is, that when we're breathing in, we can't speak. So presence and silence have something to do with each other.

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

The sound of water says what I think.

"Not all spiritual paths lead to the harmonious Oneness. Indeed, most are detours and distractions, nothing more."

Loa Tsu, Hua Hu Ching

Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy. Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds.  Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to
be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word. The unmanifested is present in this world as silence.  All you have to do is pay attention to it.

This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more silent.' Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.

"Ninety percent accuracy is not as good as silence"

Do not assume that divine guidance flows only when you are in need of help.  Guidance continues to flow whether or not you have problems.  It transcends problems, heartbreaks, and traumas, flowing through dreams and illuminations.... Whether guidance comes during times of tranquility or trauma, however, it is up to you to have the courage to acknowledge it....

Silence is a learned practice that requires far more than just not talking.  Not talking is not silence; it's just not talking.

Contain your experience with the divine so that it does not escape you but rather shapes you.  Be silent.  Silence will help you avoid engaging in the games of competition and illusion that regularly seduce us in the outside world.  Silence also helps you avoid distraction.  It helps focus the busy mind---the mind that always has to be doing something, thinking something, the mind that always has to be otherwise engaged lest it become introspective and allow the soul's voice to override its own.  The silence I am describing is a silence that you use to contain the grace you receive when you enter the Castle of your soul.  This quality of silence allows you to engage in discernment.  You carry this silence within you, even when you are with others.  It allows you to hold your center amid the chaos of your life; it keeps you clear so that you do not do or say things you will regret or make decisions out of fear.

X.
The nature of light is to shine.
The way of the river is to return home to its sea.
The essence of human is being.
For the sage there are no answers to the important
questions of existence such as, who am I and
why am I here.
The sage is silent.
The sage is smiling.
The sage just IS.

When you turn your head from horizon to horizon your eyes see a vast space in which all the things of the earth and of the sky appear. But this space is always limited where the earth meets the sky. The space in the mind is so small. In this little space all our activities seem to take place: the daily living and the hidden struggles with contradictory desires and motives. In this little space the mind seeks freedom, and so it is always a prisoner of itself. Meditation is the ending of this little space. To us, action is bringing about order in this little space of the mind. But there is another action which is not putting order in this little space. Meditation is action which comes when the mind has lost its little space. This vast space which the mind, the I, cannot reach, is silence. The mind can never be silent within itself; it is silent only within the vast space which thought cannot touch. Out of this silence there is action which is not of thought. Meditation is this silence.

We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.