Silence

“ All is silence: only the birds are singing, and the silence is so wonderful that it seems as though even the birds were singing in your breast. You go, without haste, and your life goes on like a dream. ”

“ There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of a deep peace of mind,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
And the silence of the gods who understand each other without speech.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished ”

“ Yes, then blessed I night's o'erhanging darkness,
That so calmly covered all things round me;
I enjoyed the universal silence,
While I listened ever in the silence,
If perchance the slightest sounds were stirring. ”

“ Then there was a space of silence,—one of those silences in which we seem to be caught up into the heart of things, when hidden meanings are revealed, when the soul stretches itself and grows a little. ”

“ But is not silence as good a cloak as sleep?—does it not wrap a man round with as offusc and impervious a fold? Silence—what a world it covers!—what busy schemes—what bright hopes and dark fears—what ambition, or what despair! ”

“ And all is silence—only a night air
Rustles a palm, dreaming among the stars,
From whose dim languorous long fronds they rise,
Slow disentangling their celestial gleam.
No human sound disturbs the solitude. ”

“ I feel your silence touch my words as I talk, And take them in thrall. My words fly off a forge The length of a spark; I see the night-sky easily sip them Up in the dark. The lark sings loud and glad, Yet I am not loth That silence should take the song and the bird And lose them both. A train goes roaring south, The steam-flag flying; I see the stealthy shadow of silence Alongside going. And off the forge of the world, Whirling in the draught of life, Go sparks of myriad people, filling The night with strife. Yet they never change the darkness Or blench it with noise ”

“ Light and silence: they heal all one’s wounds—all but one, and that is healed by dark and silence. I find I don’t miss clever talk, the kind I always used to have about me, when I can have silence. It’s like cold water poured over fever. ”

“ Cease that chaotic hubbub, wherein thy own soul runs to waste, to confused suicidal dislocation and stupor; out of Silence comes thy strength. "Speech is silvern, silence is golden; speech is human, silence is divine." ”

“ It smelled of dust and musty stone, of age and disuse. It was sad. It was solemn. It had the look of a place where silence had become master and was now irrevocable and terrible, and could not be broken. ”

“ Something in the quality of that silence brought the rescuing sense of its having been good to have lived and done one's part—that sense which, from places of desolation and over ways rough and steep and dark, can find its way to the meadows of serenity. ”

“ Let us hark to the whispers of love and of death,
Let us hark to the lispings of life and of fate—
In this place where pale silences flower into sound
Let us strive for some secret of all the profound
Deep and calm Silence that meshes men 'round! ”

“ With our own hearts. In presence of The End
Our cheerful banter oft gave way to words
More true and earnest,—oft in silence died.
For sometimes we speak most by silent acts;
Averted eyes; the breaking short a flower;
A stifled sigh; the pressure of a hand,
Its warmth excused, as sign of absent mind.
And the heart hath an ear more swift to read
Such silent language, than if words precise
Were writ on parchment with the best nibbed pen. ”

“ Again there is silence; save that a cold, passionless voice is heard re-echoing as from a great distance, "Silence ye! A man is dead!" Slowly the gloom deepens, though the crouching, mouselike forms of the Old Women still remain faintly visible in the obscurity. ”

“ The little sound that is as common as silence—a familiar step, a murmured word, an opening door—one hears it a thousand times with contented indifference, as one hears the singing of the tea-kettle. But one day it falls on the heart as well as on the ear, like the stroke of a swift sword. ”

“ The silence is so long and unbroken that time seems to stand still; when he speaks his voice seems to come from a long way off. I lift my eyes and look at him, and in his there is the beaten, broken look that never comes into a man's face until the last hope is gone—the last stake lost. ”

“ When the general ceased there was silence—that eloquent, solemn silence which accompanies those moments in which the Genius of History hovers over the heads of men, and, touching them with its pinions, ties their tongues and opens the eyes of the spirit, so that they can look into the future, and, with presaging horror, read all the secrets of coming time as by a flash of lightning. ”

“ Everywhere was silence—silence in the starred depths, silence on the bosom of the sleeping earth. Now, if ever, great thoughts might rise in a man’s mind, and for a space he might forget his littleness in the sense that he partook of the pure immensity about him. ”

“ O, such an hour of deepening silence, when friends stand beside each other like strangers, and compare the silence with the old outpouring, has too many heart-stings, and a thousand smothered tears, and for words sighs! ”

“ Is there anything that hurts you sometimes in their voices and their looks? And at times when you are sitting side by side breathing the same air, does a heavy silence fall upon you, like the silence before a storm? ”

“ A silky wind blows down from a sheltering eminence and carves his face and makes me cling to him. Are we on the borders of the true silence, the ultimate silence in which human beings find themselves face to face? ”

“ There are portentous clouds hanging over our heads; we hear the murmurs of the fitful winds; we see sad omens of a dreadful storm; and where is our watchman’s voice? Your silence gives us fears that we are betrayed. ”

“ Silence fell around us like a curtain, and the eternal Night, with her fresh dews and unclouded stars, looked alone upon the compact of our hearts,—an emblem of the eternity, the freshness, and the unearthly though awful brightness of the love which it hallowed and beheld! ”

“ In its glorious presence silence is the only language that is befitting. In such a presence sound is discord, for such enchantment as it begets cannot be made articulate. Its influence steals into the senses and lifts the spirit up. ”

“ Not, verily, with such silence as that of the brutes who are in the likeness and image of men, but of those whose silence is more exalted than all the cries and noise and screams of those who may be heard. ”

“ There is no bird in the steel-blue heaven, no movement upon the dull, grey earth—above all, there is absolute silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a sound in all that mighty wilderness; nothing but silence—complete and heart-subduing silence. ”

“ There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave — under the deep deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush'd — no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free. ”

“ A long silence. The silence of men who see monstrous forces at work, in which human lives are tossed like straws in flame. A silence reaching back to old ghosts of history, reaching out to supernatural aid. ”

“ But had they known—could they have seen into this tumultuous heart—what a silence would have settled upon these noisy streets; and in what terror and soul-confusion would each man have slunk away from his fellows into the quiet and solitude of his own home. ”

“ By a well-directed silence I have sometimes seen threatening and troublesome persons routed,—unconsciously and innocently, no doubt. You sit musing, as if you were in broad nature again; they cannot stand it; their position becomes more and more uncomfortable every moment. So much humanity over against one without any disguise,—not even the disguise of speech! With a little silence, things take shape as they should. ”

“ Still those who were left persisted doggedly in the effort to overpower him, and the almost utter silence with which they fought was awesome. There were no shouts or yells or shrill cries. The silence was broken only by the thud of pounding feet, the hissing intake of swift-drawn breaths, the smothered gasps which followed a blow striking home. ”

“ The silence continued, half embarrassing, half tingling—the kind of silence that sometimes follows when two human beings, to whom great things are destined, enter that most critical stage of first establishing contacts. ”

“ My silence, life returns to thee
In all the pauses of her breath.
Hush back to rest the melody
That out of thee awakeneth;
And thou, wake ever, wake for me.
Full, full is life in hidden places,
For thou art silence unto me.
Full, full is thought in endless spaces.
Full is my life. A silent sea
Lies round all shores with long embraces. ”

“ The silence is profound; a word spoken would be insupportable in the then state of the soul, when all is intimate and internal; as soon as the last sound expires, all depart slowly and without the least noise; each one seems to dread the return to the vulgar interests of the world. ”

“ He took the hand she offered him and one of those silences followed which once having passed between a man and woman, is remembered above all spoken words, a silence in which all barriers fall away, and soul speaks to soul. ”

“ This silence seemed to him, fancifully, more than mere lack of words—it conveyed a sense of reserve force, of quiet appraisal of himself and his words, of the experiences of men who have been close to realities, who have done things in the world. ”

“ Has stirred the cypress-leaves at eventide,
When night has stilled forever Life's white throat,
And his gold lute lies shattered by his side,
We two shall follow through a world remote
The silence whereinto Love's music died. ”

“ Open the door." Dead silence. Perfect unbroken silence, and the darkness seemed to wrap round me and envelope me in a thick fog. There was an oppression, a weight in the atmosphere, and I felt an indescribable something that seemed to make it an impossibility either to speak or move. ”

“ Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
⁠To perish never; ”

“ Who shall hear, O Nature, messages thou wouldst send
⁠In thy desolate places, far from the moving throng?
Ah, but the soul that loveth thee best may comprehend.
⁠The voice of the silence speaketh louder than song! ”

“ With my soul’s fine ear I listen and hear
The tender Silence speak,
As it leans on the breast of Night to rest,
And presses his dusky cheek.
And the darkness turns in its sleep, and yearns
For something that is kin ”

“ Putting aside the terrifying thought of our impending doom—for the bravest man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us, and I never made any pretensions to be brave—the silence itself was too great to allow of it. Reader, you may have lain awake at night and thought the silence oppressive, but I say with confidence that you can have no idea what a vivid, tangible thing is perfect silence. ”

“ There is a silence in the world
Since we have said farewell;
And beauty with an alien speech
An alien tale would tell.
There is a silence in the world,
Which is not peace nor quiet:
Ever I seek to flee therefrom,
And walk the ways of riot.
But when I hear the music moan
In rooms of thronging laughter,
A tongueless demon drives me forth,
And silence follows after.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1923, before the cutoff of January 1, 1928. ”

“ Hast found it: for this silence, filling now
The globed clarity of receiving space,
This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace,
Death, love, sin, sanity,
Must in yon silence' clear solution lie. ”