“Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.” – Pythagoras
“We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.” – Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”- Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
“My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.”- Edith Sitwell
“Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. – Amir” – Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of – to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others… and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.” – Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse
“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.” – Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.” – Rumi
“I don’t think…” then you shouldn’t talk, said the Hatter.”- Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.” – William S. Burroughs
“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.” – George Eliot
“It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.” – Honore de Balzac, Pere Goriot
“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.” – Elbert Hubbard
“If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet…maybe we could understand something.” – Federico Fellini
At the Still Point 
Awesome stuff!
“Most people are perfectly afraid of silence.” — E.E.Cummings
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It really is true what Cummings says, Thomas, isn’t it? Afraid or uncomfortable or suspicious when others are silent. However, like Edith Sitwell, I consider silence or being silent one of my hobbies!
Many thanks for your comment; much appreciated 🙂
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