13 thoughts on Silence

I
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

II
"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

III
"Silence make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts."
— Margaret Lee Runbeck
IV
"Silence is sometimes the best answer"
— Dalai Lama XIV

V
"Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over."
— Gloria Naylor

VI
"Silence is a true friend who never betrays.
— Confucius

VII
"Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak."
— Margaret Weis (Dragons of a Lost Star)


VIII
"I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

IX
"In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

X
"Silence may be as variously shaded as speech."
— Edith Wharton


XI
"Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure."
— Henri Nouwen

XII
"Before you speak ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, it is true, does it improve upon the silence?"
— Shirdi Sai Baba

XIII
"Silence is noise to the cluttered mind."
— Lemlem Tsegaw