Quotes About Quiet

“The world is quiet here.”
― Lemony Snicket

“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

“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

“It's quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people's dreams.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear. ”
― Baba Ram Das

“The quiet sense of something lost”
― Alfred Tennyson

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.”
― Rollo May

“That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”
― Ray Bradbury

“summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. for those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. you can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. summer just opens the door and lets you out.”
― Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

“Just because you don't say much doesn't mean people don't notice you. It's actually the quiet ones who often draw the most attention. There's this constant whirlwind of motion and sound all around, and then there's the quiet one, the eye of the storm.”
― Amy Efaw, After

“Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown...”
― Robert Greene

“As spiritual searchers we need to become freer and freer of the attachment to our own smallness in which we get occupied with me-me-me. Pondering on large ideas or standing in front of things which remind us of a vast scale can free us from acquisitiveness and competitiveness and from our likes and dislikes. If we sit with an increasing stillness of the body, and attune our mind to the sky or to the ocean or to the myriad stars at night, or any other indicators of vastness, the mind gradually stills and the heart is filled with quiet joy. Also recalling our own experiences in which we acted generously or with compassion for the simple delight of it without expectation of any gain can give us more confidence in the existence of a deeper goodness from which we may deviate. (39)”
― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra

“But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?"
You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“We love the night and its quiet; and there is no night that we love so well as that on which the moon is coffined in clouds.”
― Fitz James O'Brien, Classic Ghost Stories by Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, Charles Dickens and Others

“Usually, when the distractions of daily life deplete our energy, the first thing we eliminate is the thing we eliminate is the thing we need the most: quiet, reflective time. Time to dream, time to contemplate what's working and what's not, so that we can make changes for the better. (January 17)”
― Sarah Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy

“The unusual thing about quiet is that when you seek it, it is almost impossible to achieve. When you strive for quiet, you become impatient, and impatience is itself a noiseless noise. You can block every superficial sound, but, with each new layer extinguished, a next rises up, finer and more entrapping, until you arrive at last in the infinite attitude of your own riotous mind. Inside is where all the memories last like wells, and the unspoken wishes like golden buds, and the pain that you keep, lingering and implicit, staying inside, nesting inside, articulating, articulating, through to the day you die. (p. 240)”
― Hilary Thayer Hamann, Anthropology of an American Girl

“The statue stood quiet and still, like the silhouette of a tired mime.
”
― Jarod Kintz, At even one penny, this book would be overpriced. In fact, free is too expensive, because you'd still waste time by reading it.

“Outside, there was that predawn kind of clarity, where the momentum of living has not quite captured the day. The air was not filled with conversation or thought bubbles or laughter or sidelong glances. Everyone was sleeping, all of their ideas and hopes and hidden agendas entangled in the dream world, leaving this world clear and crisp and cold as a bottle of milk in the fridge. ”
― Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

“No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.”
― Erich Maria Remarque

“The Chair


I’m writing to you, who made the archaic wooden chair
look like a throne while you sat on it.

Amidst your absence, I choose to sit on the floor,
which is dusty as a dry Kansas day.

I am stoic as a statue of Buddha,
not wanting to bother the old wooden chair,

which has been silent now for months.
In this sunlit moment I think of you.

I can still picture you sitting there--
your forehead wrinkled like an un-ironed shirt,

the light splashed on your face,
like holy water from St. Joseph’s.

The chair, with rounded curves
like that of a full-figured woman,

seems as mellow as a monk in prayer.
The breeze blows from beyond the curtains,

as if your spirit has come back to rest.
Now a cloud passes overhead,

and I hush, waiting to hear what rests
so heavily on the chair’s lumbering mind.

Do not interrupt, even if the wind offers to carry
your raspy voice like a wispy cloud.”
― Jarod Kintz, A Letter to Andre Breton, Originally Composed on a Leaf of Lettuce With an Ink-dipped Carrot

“I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself.”
― H. Beam Piper, Fuzzies and Other People

“I am a minimalist. I like saying the most with the least.”
― Bob Newhart

“There's an old adage," he said, "translated from the ancient Coptic, that contains all the wisdom of the ages -- "Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

“I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.”
― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

“Emotion is always multiplied in the art of a person who doesn't really show much emotion. It once expanded deep within his hidden soul, and following the downplay his audience is blown away.”
― Criss Jami

“Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers.”
― Ester Buchholz

“If you can be quiet, you’re more than welcome to stay in my House of Silence. Bring your own bubblegum ice cream. 
”
― Jarod Kintz, Seriously delirious, but not at all serious

“She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.”
― Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting