QUOTES ON SILENCE
“Where shall the Word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, There is not enough silence.”
T.S. Elliott
“The one fact we forget is that the saints of old were capable of spiritual silence simply because they had not
contracted our modern habit of ceaseless talk in their ordinary life. Their days were days of silence, relieved
by periods of conversation, while ours are a wilderness of talk with a rare oasis of silence.”
Andrew Murray (pp. 38-39)
“Quietness in a man or a woman is a mark of strength. Noise is not eloquence. Loudness is not power. In
all the departments of life, it is the quiet forces that effect most. Therefore, if we would be strong, we must
learn to be quiet. A quiet heart will give a quiet life.”
J. R. Miller (P. 129)
“Whenever the sounds of the world die out in the soul, then we hear the whisperings of God.”
F. W. Faber (P. 132)
“A score of years ago, a friend placed in my hand a book called True Peace. It was an old mediaeval
message, and it had but one thought – that God was waiting in the depths of my being to talk to me if I would
only get still enough to hear His voice.
I thought this would be a very easy matter, and so began to get still. But I had no sooner commenced than
a perfect pandemonium of voices reached my ear, a thousand clamoring notes from without and within, until
I could hear nothing but their noise and din.
Some were my own voices, my own questions, some my very prayers. Others were suggestions of the
tempter and the vices from the world’s turmoil.
In every direction I was pulled and pushed and greeted with noisy acclamations and unspeakable unrest.
It seemed necessary for me to listen to some of them and to answer some of them; but God said, “Be still and
know that I am God.” Then came the concert of thoughts for tomorrow, and its duties and cares; but He said,
“Be still.”
And as I listened, and slowly learned to obey, and shut my ear to every sound, I found after a while that
when the other noises ceased, or I ceased to hear them, there was a still small voice in the depths of my being
that began to speak with an inexpressible tenderness, power and comfort.
As I listened, it became to me the voice of prayer, the voice of wisdom, the voice of duty, and I did not
need to think so hard, or pray so hard, or trust so hard; but that “still small voice” of the Holy Spirit in my
heart was God’s prayer in my secret soul, was God’s answer to all my questions, was God’s life and strength
for soul and body, and became the substance of all knowledge, and all prayer and all blessing: for it was the
living GOD Himself as my life, my all.
It is thus that our spirit drinks in the life of our risen Lord and we go forth to life’s conflicts and duties
like a flower that has drunk in, through the shades of night, the cool and crystal drops of dew. But as dew
never falls on a stormy night, so the dews of His grace never come to the restless soul.”
A. B. Simpson, from Streams in the Desert, pp, 195-6
"Better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
Abraham Lincoln
"We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time's
hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God."
Annie Dillard
FROM - THE HOUR THAT CHANGED THE WORLD By Dick Eastman
“If we read the biographies of the great and wise, we shall find they are people of long silences and deep
ponderings. Whatever of vision, of power, of genius there was in their work was wrought in silence. And
when we turn to the inner circle of the spiritual masters – the men and women, not necessarily gifted or
distinguished, to whom God was a living, bright reality which supernaturalized their everyday life and
transmuted their homeliest actions into sublime worship – we find that their roots stuck deep into the soil of
spiritual silence.”
Creative Prayer, by Bridgid E. Herman (p. 32)
“How easy it is to listen to your own voice pressing you to do the selfish things! But it is the voice of God –
the inner voice – we must learn to hear. The regular quiet time is the laboratory for the developing that
capacity to ‘hear.’ In the course of the busy day, too, we will hear His voice, but it is in the stillness of the
prayer closet that the gift of listening is given and received.”
Donald E. Demaray (p. 130)
“Prayer of positive, creative quality needs a background of silence, and until we are prepared to practice this
silence, we need not hope to know the power of prayer.”
A praying saint (p. 131)
“In the cities no one is quiet, but many are lonely,” he said. “In the country people are quiet, but few are
lonely.”
Geoffrey Fisher, and Archbishop of Canterbury from Different Seasons, by Dale Turner, p. 40
“There was silence, and I heard a still voice.” (Job 1:16)
This is our rightful place, to be “seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” and to “sit still” there.
But how few there are who make it their actual experience! How few, indeed think even that it is possible
for them to “sit still” in these “heavenly places” in the everyday life of a world so full of turmoil as this.
We may believe perhaps that to pay a little visit to these heavenly places on Sundays, or now and
then in times of spiritual exaltation, may be within the range or possibility; but to be actually “seated” there
every day and all day long is altogether another matter; and yet it is very plain that it is for Sundays and
week-days as well.
A quiet spirit is of inestimable value in carrying on outward activities; and nothing so hinders the
working of the hidden spiritual forces, upon which, after all our success in every thing really depends, as a
spirit of unrest and anxiety.
There is immense power in stillness. A great saint once said, “All things come to him who knows
how to trust and be silent.” The words are pregnant with meaning. Knowledge of this fact would immensely
change our ways of working. Instead of restless struggles, we would “sit down” inwardly before the Lord
and would let the Divine forces of His Spirit work out in silence the ends to which we aspire. You may not
see or feel the operations of this silent force, but be assured it is always working mightily, and will work for
you, if you only get your spirit still enough to be carried along by the currents of its power.
Hanna Whitall Smith
“I do not believe that we have begun to understand the marvelous power there is in stillness. We are in such
a hurry-we must be doing. This is a danger in regard to our Christian life: we want to do something to be
Christians when we need to let HIM work in us. You may depend upon it: God never says, ‘Stand still,’ or
‘sit still,’ or ‘be still’ unless HE is going to do something.
Do you know how still you have to be when your likeness is being painted? Now God has one eternal
purpose concerning us, and that is that we should be like His Son; and in order that this may be son, we must
be…passive. We hear so much about activity; maybe we need to know what it is to be quiet.”
Streams in the Desert
“I will be still, and I will behold in my dwelling place.” (Isaiah 18:4, R.V.)
Assyria was marching against Ethiopia, the people of which are described as tall and smooth. And as the
armies advance, God makes no effort to arrest them; it seems as though they will be allowed to work their
will. He is still watching them from His dwelling place, the sun still shines on them; but before the harvest,
the whole of the proud army of Assyria is smitten as easily as when sprigs are cut off by the pruning hook of
the husbandman.
Is not this a marvelous conception of God – being still and watching? His stillness is not acquiescence.
His silence is not consent. He is only biding His time, and will arise, in the most opportune moment, and
when the designs of the wicked seem on the point of success, to overwhelm them with disaster. As we look
out on the evil of the world; as we think of the apparent success of wrong-doing; as we wince beneath the
oppression of those that hate us, let us remember these marvelous words about God being still and beholding.
There is another side to this. Jesus beheld His disciples toiling at the oars through the stormy night; and
watched though unseen, the successive steps of the anguish of Bethany, when Lazarus slowly passed through
the stages of mortal sickness, until he succumbed and was borne to the rocky tomb. But He was only waiting
the moment when He could interpose most effectually. Is He still to thee? He is not unobservant; He is
beholding all things; He has His finger on thy pulse, keenly sensitive to all its fluctuations. He will come to
save thee when the precise moment has arrived. –
From Streams in the Dessert, p. 211–Daily Devotional Commentary.
“If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice,” theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said,
“I should reply: Create silence.”
Half Time, by Bob Buford, p. 80