Silent

“ Silent is my garment when I tread the earth
or dwell in the towns or stir the waters.
Sometimes my trappings lift me up over
the habitations of heroes and this high air,
and the might of the welkin bears me afar
above mankind. ”

“ Silence, what a world it covers,—what busy schemes, what bright hopes and dark fears, what ambition, or what despair! Do you ever see a man in any society sitting mute for hours, and not feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate the wall he thus builds up between others and himself? Does he not interest you far more than the brilliant talker at your left, the airy wit at your right whose shafts fall in vain on the sullen barrier of the silent man! ”

“ Anyhow, let no husband or lover believe it. Vain are the deeds of dumb devotion, the unwearying forethought, the tender care, the gifts of price, and the priceless gifts of attentive, watchful guard and guide, the labours of Love—all vain. Silent is the speech of Action. ”

“ Then they were silent:—words are little aid
To Love, whose deepest vows are ever made
By the heart's beat alone. Oh, silence is
Love's own peculiar eloquence of bliss!—
Music swept past:—it was a simple tone; ”

“ You are as silent as the grave commonly; but when you do speak, you speak well,” said the vivandiere condescendingly. “I hate silence myself! Thoughts are very good grain, but if they are not whirled round, round, round, and winnowed and ground in the millstones of talk, they keep little, hard, useless kernels, that not a soul can digest.” ”

“ And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me ... everything was silent--everything. But up in the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent. ”

“ Those—who keep silent are almost always lacking in subtlety and refinement of heart; silence is an objection, to swallow a grievance must necessarily produce a bad temper—it even upsets the stomach. All silent people are dyspeptic. You perceive that I should not like to see rudeness undervalued; it is by far the most humane form of contradiction, and, in the midst of modern effeminacy, it is one of our first virtues; If one is sufficiently rich for it, it may even be a joy to be wrong. ”

“ He was silent for a while. “Queer how smells and things start one thinking. Ever realize that? Things more than people, and smells more than things.”
I agreed. There was nothing in his appearance to rouse one's imagination. ”

“ The silent God—O brethren, weep to-day— The silent God hath quenched my torch's ray, And the vain dream hath flown. ”

“ If you repeat a firm resolve to yourself aloud, vigorously, even vehemently, you are more likely to carry it to reality than if you merely resolve in silence.
We become so accustomed to our silent thoughts that the voicing of them, the giving audible expression to our yearnings, makes a much deeper impression upon us. ”

“ It makes me cold and sick—and with the absolute, almost alarmed sense, of the visible material quenching of an indispensable light. That he's silent forever will be a fact hard, for a long time, to live with. ”

“ But, as you by their faces see,
All silent and all damn'd! ”

“ In the odd silence that followed we looked at each other in something like alarm, for the populace was silent, too, and a silent populace may so easily be a dangerous one. In a moment, though, they all began shouting, in cumulative waves of noise, louder and more frantically. ”

“ When these gentry hold forth, by the hour, about their convictions and their theories, their beliefs and disbeliefs, their likings and dislikings, their tastes and their principles, their souls, their minds, and their bodies—if, in despair, you at last, by way of a change, turn the conversation towards some one else, they become loftily silent. ”

“ Silently, with a dumb, pleading look, she submits, and when he feels the soft, cool foot between his hands, everything seems to whirl before him; a sort of fiery madness comes over him, and, bending down to the ground, he presses his fevered brow upon it. ”

“ From a silent, observing child he ran into a stormy, vivid youth that often threatened disaster if not positive annihilation—but he's of the breed that dashes to the edge, grinds his teeth, plants his feet, and looks over!—then, breathing hard, draws back. ”

“ Yes, I know well that others before me have felt what I feel and express; that many others feel it to-day, although they keep silence about it. Why do I not keep silence about it too? Well, for the very reason that most of those who feel it are silent about it; and yet, though they are silent, they obey in silence that inner voice. And I do not keep silence about it because it is for many the thing which must not be spoken, the abomination of abominations—infandum—and I believe that it is necessary now and again to speak the thing which must not be spoken. But if it leads to nothing? ”

“ I don't know how to be silent when my heart is speaking. ”

“ If you choose to be silent, it is just as well. If you go to sleep, they will not mind,—unless, under the spell of the genius of the place, your sleep becomes vocal, and you involuntarily join the concert in the undesirable role of De Trop. ”

“ And again, silent worship tends to diminish numbers, as also the exceeding weakness—with rare exceptions—of the words that occasionally break the silence; and the absence of an external motive to fix the attention encourages roving thoughts. ”

“ People who shout so loud, my lords, do nothing;
The only men I fear are silent men. ”

“ To speak or to be silent was equally an effort, for when they were silent they were keenly conscious of each other's presence, and yet words were either too trivial or too large. ”

“ CHAPTER XXI. “Heaven’s airs amid the harpstrings dwell; And we wish they ne’er may fade; They cease; and the soul is a silent cell, Where music never played. Dream follows dream through the long night-hours.” ”

“ It is a silence not of thanklessness, but of respect and devotion. About others—contemporaries, or juniors by many years—who have instructed, consoled, strengthened, and amused us, we must also be silent. ”

“ So for time upon time the race of the Silent Ones took the paths no more, placing aside the half-thought that they had of making their way to earth face even as they had made their way from beside earth heart. They turned wholly to the seeking of wisdom—and after other time on time they attained that which killed even the faintest shadow of the half-thought. ”

“ All these—all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon, See, hear, and am silent. ”

“ Not a word more was said on the subject, and the boys were again silent—one of those blessed, short silences in which the resolves which colour a life are so often taken. ”

“ Last of the race of them who grieve,
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent—the best are silent now. ”

“ So very, very few people can simply exist silently without sooner or later breaking into speech or falling fast asleep. Alone with Nature books are the only possible company—books and one's own unspoken thoughts. ”

“ Only to think of some things makes me feel venomous, and though I really believe I'm improving in the sunbath of your example, which I have every day, the cure isn't complete yet. Until I am able to talk of a certain person without wanting to sprinkle my conversation with curses, I mean to be silent. ”

“ Abbâ Poemen used to say, “One man is thought to be silent, yet his heart condemneth others, and he who is thus speaketh everything; and another speaketh from morn until evening, and yet keepeth silence, but such a man speaketh not without profit.” ”

“ Of course, for a person of vivacious temper and strong feelings 190to remain silent, or to say always, ‘I do not know,’ gives full employment to the will and the nerves. I used sometimes to feel as though I should burst. ”

“ CONCERNING great things one should either be silent or one should speak loftily: loftily that is to say, cynically and innocently. ”

“ Of course one must not overlook the fact that "the great silent man" is a consolation to common inarticulateness and ineffectiveness, the general belief that where there is a slow tongue profundity is found being one of those pleasant things which we like to think about ourselves—"we could and we would." ”

“ The Silent Lover.
Silence in love betrays more love
Than words, though ne'er so witty;
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.
JOSHUA SYLVESTER 1563-1618. The Soul's Errand [3]
Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand!
Fear not to touch the best:
The truth shall be thy warrant.
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
RICHARD BARNFIELD. Address to the Nightingale. ”

“ If any one, out of smallness of soul, or for some ulterior motive, thinks to get out of something by keeping silent, they force him out into clear water without pity. And there are very few such small-souled persons at important village meetings. ”

“ But real action is in silent moments. ”

“ That vast domain of every-day life where the lips are silent, though the mental preludes or consequences of important events are in full progress, cannot be shown without violating truth. The performer is obliged to think aloud, even though breathless silence be prescribed by all the probabilities of the scene. ”

“ If you find that you have a hastiness in your temper, which unguardedly breaks out into indiscreet sallies, or rough expressions, to either your superiors, your equals, or your inferiors, watch it narrowly, check it carefully, and call the ‘suaviter in modo’ to your assistance: at the first impulse of passion, be silent till you can be soft. ”

“ She listened again—and the foreboding deepened to an amazed fear.
"They say, the Silent Ones," she went on, "that they know not whether even they have power to destroy. Energies we know nothing of entered into its shaping and are part of it; and still other energies it has gathered to itself"—she paused; a shadow of puzzlement crept into her voice "and other energies still, forces that ye do know and symbolize by certain names—hatred and pride and lust and many others which are forces real as that hidden in the Keth; and among them—fear, which weakens all those others—" Again she paused. ”

“ EQUAL PAYMENT They knew what it meant; even Joan had heard the cry of the lone wolf hunting in the lean time of winter, and of all things sad, all things lonely, all things demoniacal, the howl of a wolf stands alone. Lee Haines reached for his gun, little Joan stood up silent on the hearth, but Kate and Buck Daniels sat listening with a sort of hungry terror, as the cry sobbed away to quiet. ”

“ but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent. ”

“ He was left a good deal to himself. He had been inclined to talkativeness, but gradually he became silent. He began to think of the difference between himself and others. ”

“ I go to London and see the busy multitudes in Fleet Street and the Strand, and it comes across my mind that they are but the ghosts of the past, haunting the streets that I have seen silent and wretched, going to and fro, phantasms in a dead city, the mockery of life in a galvanised body. ”

“ I go out into the Byfleet Road, and vehicles pass me, a butcher boy in a cart, a cabful of visitors, a workman on a bicycle, children going to school, and suddenly they become vague and unreal, and I hurry again with the artilleryman through the hot, brooding silence. Of a night I see the black powder darkening the silent streets, and the contorted bodies shrouded in that layer; they rise upon me tattered and dog-bitten. They gibber and grow fiercer, paler, uglier, mad distortions of humanity at last, and I wake, cold and wretched, in the darkness of the night. ”

“ Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even:
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.
Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries, 'Away!'
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood:
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.
Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;
Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth. ”