This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
Chastity | Discretion | Display | Opinion | Public | Silence |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Silence is all we dread. There's Ransom in a Voice - but Silence is Infinity.
Silence |
It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
The coldness of our love is the silence of our hearts toward God. Without this we may pronounce prayers, but we do not pray; for what shall lead us to mate upon the laws of God, if it be not love of Him who has made these laws? Let our hearts be full of love then, and they will pray.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
We cease to pray to God as soon as we cease to love Him, as soon as we cease to thirst for His perfections. The coldness of our love is the silence of our hearts toward God. Without this we may pronounce prayers, but we do not pray; for what shall lead us to mate upon the laws of God if it be not the love of Him who has made these laws? Let our hearts be full of love, then, and they will pray.
Augustus or Augustus Caesar, fully Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, NULL
No risk attends the meed that silence brings.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.
Isak Dinesen, pen name of Baroness Karen Blixen
Who tells a finer tale than any of us? Silence does.
Silence |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"Freedom" means freedom from the mind. Then you are simply in a silence, and in that silence you melt, you merge with the whole. And to melt and merge with the whole is to be holy. Not by fasting, not by torturing, but by becoming one with the whole, one becomes holy.
It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they ''speak with the accent of natives'' they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds.
Art | Effort | Learning | People | Silence | Time | Art | Learn |
Poetic experience is distinct in nature from mystical experience. Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit, it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another, not with the Principle of Being.
Creativity | Experience | Longing | Mystical | Nature | Poetry | Silence | Spirit | Wants | World |
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
It is a delightful thought that, during the familiarity of constant proximity, the heart gathers up in silence the nutriment of love, as the diamond, even beneath the water, imbibes the light it emits. Time, which deadens hatred, secretly strengthens love.