"Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent."
—Attributed to Dionysius I of Syracuse (aka Dionysius the Elder) in Handy-book of Literary Curiosities
"Silence is the corner-stone of character."
—Charles Alexander Eastman, The Soul of the Indian
"Soon people will speak of silence as they do about a fairy tale. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Cars, airplanes, radios, and atomic bombs are the latest major triumphs of progress. Man no longer has anything essential to do, but he wants to do it at top speed and with superhuman noise. He seeks recreation and never realizes that the robot steering him is actually driving him into catastrophe and nothingness. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation."
—Jean Arp, Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories
"As the Swiss Inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity."
—Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
/misc | Dec 01, 2011