Softly Creeping

We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.
~ Leonora Carrington

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
~ Rumi

Never miss a good chance to shut up.
~ Will Rogers

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.
~ Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“I don't think..." then you shouldn't talk, said the Hatter.
~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
~ Ansel Adams

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
~ George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such

Silence is a source of Great Strength.
~ Lao Tzu

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

I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.
~ Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.
~ Rumi

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.
~ Federico Fellini

On the other hand…

I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.
~ Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
~ Audre Lorde

There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
~ Arundhati Roy

Paul Simon – The Sounds of Silence