The Silent Flute Quotes

I wish neither to possess nor to be possessed. I no longer covet 'paradise'. More important, I no longer fear 'hell'.
The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning but I did not take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it, until this moment.
Now I see that I will never find the light unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, consuming myself. ~ Bruce Lee

The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to "burst" with boldness and good-will into "the silent sea" of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received. ~ Seneca The Younger

Marching thus at night, a battalion is doubly impressive. The silent monster is full of restrained power; resolute in its onward sweep, impervious to danger, it looks a menacing engine of destruction, steady to its goal, and certain of its mission. ~ Patrick MacGill

You cannot give anything more important than the Love reflected in your own life. That is the one true universal language, which allows us to speak Chinese or the dialects of India. For if, one day, you go to those places, the silent eloquence of Love will mean that you will be understood by everyone. ~ Paulo Coelho

So everything we believe about happiness is wrong," I said.
He nodded.
Everything?" I asked, when what I meant was, Everything? Including you? Including me?
And Marcus, being Marcus, knew what I really wanted to know, and answered my silent, more significant question. He held up his hand to shield the rays and looked me in the eyes.
Almost. ~ Megan McCafferty

The Government has been compelled to levy taxes which unavoidably hit large sections of the population. The Italian people are disciplined, silent and calm, they work and know that there is a Government which governs, and know, above all, that if this Government hits cruelly certain sections of the Italian people, it does not so out of caprice, but from the supreme necessity of national order. ~ Benito Mussolini

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous,
tranquil contribution of all
to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism.
Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.
~ Oscar A. Romero

I took the dog out for a walk tonight, and together we wandered across the meadow next door. It was a warm summer's night, dark, and moonless. There were a handful of fireflies flickering intermittently, some so close to me I could see they were burning green as they flew, and some further away, who seemed to be flashing white.
And in the sky above them a continual roil of distant summer lightning (the storm distant enough that it was silent) burned and flashed and illuminated the clouds. It seemed as if the lightning bugs were talking to the lightning, in a perfect call and response of flash and counterflash. I watched the sky and the meadow flash and flash while the dog walked ahead of me, and realised that I was perfectly happy ... ~ Neil Gaiman

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. ~ J. Robert Oppenheimer

Nature is not silent, and never was a name more derisively inappropriate than when we speak of these non-human creatures who hoot and crow and bray as the dumb animals. ~ Winifred Holtby

Evils that befall the world are not nearly so often caused by bad men as they are by good men who are silent when an opinion must be voiced. ~ Lawrence Schiller

I Leave This at Your Ear For When You Wake"

I leave this at your ear for when you wake,
A creature in its abstract cage asleep.
Your dreams blindfold you by the light they make.

The owl called from the naked-woman tree
As I came down by the Kyle farm to hear
Your house silent by the speaking sea.

I have come late but I have come before
Later with slaked steps from stone to stone
To hope to find you listening for the door.

I stand in the ticking room. My dear, I take
A moth kiss from your breath. The shore gulls cry.
I leave this at your ear for when you wake. ~ W. S. Graham

A great poet must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent desert, the eye of a North American Indian tracing the footsteps of an enemy upon the leaves that strew the forest, the touch of a blind man feeling the face of a darling child. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have always felt deep within myself that I do not trust that I am already OK as I am, and that I do not trust that life takes care of me. But now I discover a silent place in the depth of my inner being, where I am already one with life, where I am OK as I am.
It is also a silent inner place of healing and wholeness, where I can find a love and acceptance for that which is imperfect within myself. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

We have to save our children. We have to break down our children's walls patiently with the understanding that they will come around slowly but surely. The silent killer of darkness will not win. We have to bring the light out of our brittle and fragile children. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

I think it's degrading of you, Flora,' cried Mrs Smiling at breakfast. 'Do you truly mean that you don't ever want to work at anything?'
Her friend replied after some thought: 'Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as "Persuasion", but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say "Collecting material." No one can object to that. Besides, I shall be.'
Mrs Smiling drank some coffee in silent disapproval.
'If you ask me,' continued Flora, 'I think I have much in common with Miss Austen. She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comfortable around her, and so do I. You see Mary,' - and here Flora began to grow earnest and to wave one finger about - 'unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all about one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot endure messes. ~ Stella Gibbons

You can't order the waves to be silent, madame," Baldanders told her. "They are coming, and they are bitter with salt. ~ Gene Wolfe

Intuition means to follow the silent whispers of the inner in a basic "yes" to life. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Violence is the most popular political commodity. Politicians are the wholesalers of violence. Ruling elites are the main beneficiary of violence and working classes are the innocent and silent victims of violence. When politician and corporate forces comes together to promote the gross violence they call that War, uprisings etc. ~ William Gomes

You should have taken me with you, I whisper to him. Then I lean my head against his and begin to cry. In my mind, I make a silent promise to my brother's killer.
I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to. I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run. I make you this promise: your life is mine. ~ Marie Lu

To whom do I owe the power behind my voice, what strength I have become, yeasting up like sudden blood from under the bruised skin's blister?
My father leaves his psychic print upon me, silent, intense, and unforgiving. But his is a distant lightning. Images of women flaming like torches adorn and define the borders of my journey, stand like dykes between me and the chaos. It is the images of women, kind and cruel, that lead me home. ~ Audre Lorde

Sometimes it seemed to me I could not look at those silent little figures; that I must go north, to the grim coal fields, to the Rocky Mountain camps, where the labor fight is at least fought by grown men. ~ Mary Harris Jones

The Dead are a larger army than any ever assembled, and they follow no leader, fear no threat, and accept no bribe or compromise. The Dead are the silent majority, and should they ever decide to say something, it will be the new law of the land. ~ Isaac Marion

Intelligent beings from other planets regularly visit our world in an effort to enter into contact with us. NASA and the American government know this and possess a great deal of evidence. Nevertheless, they remain silent in order not to alarm people. I am dedicated to forcing the authorities to end their silence. ~ Gordon Cooper

He mouths something so slowly that his snarling lips articulate the sound of each and every letter, but I read them as though his silent words blast as loud as a battle cry. "Kill her! ~ Michelle Warren

As they left, the girls were choking with laughter, but once they reached Mersault's house and the cool shade of the rooms, which emphasized the dazzling whiteness of the sun-drenched garden walls, they discovered a silent harmony that Catherine expressed by the desire to take a sunbath on the terrace. ~ Albert Camus

Lily Chadwick knew there was something different about the fiercely scowling gentleman the first moment she saw him.
She could feel it.
The instant their gazes met, caught, held, something skittered across her skin like a rain of white sparks. It entered her bloodstream, heating her from the inside until her breath became stilted and her knees went alarmingly weak.
He stared at her from beneath a brow drawn low in a forbidding expression. His eyes were so dark, even the light of the glittering ballroom could not be reflected there. The angles of his face were hard, his jaw sharply defined, and he held his mouth in a harsh line that attempted to harden the full curve of his lower lip but didn't quite manage it.
Lily tried to glance away demurely, but she couldn't seem to manage. She felt a flutter that became a tightening in her belly. Her heart stopped, skipped a few beats, then started up again in a frantic rhythm as he just kept watching her.
Despite his severe, aloof appearance, something about him reached out to her, touching her with an intrinsic sort of recognition. It left her feeling as though she stood in the heart of a firestorm. She sensed with a certainty beyond rational explanation that his unyielding manner was a facade, as if he were a hero in some gothic novel. There was passion in him. She felt it in every quickened, prey-like breath she took while frozen under his intent stare.
The silent interaction between them was becoming mo ~ Amy Sandas

She went to bed mentally exhausted but woke after only a few hours of disrupted sleep…because she could smell Judd's scent in her quarters. Getting out of bed still half-asleep, she saw it was four a.m. She walked out wearing the satin slip she used as her nightgown, her feet bare.
"Judd?" For a second, she couldn't locate him. Then her night vision kicked in and she found him seated in an armchair close to the coffee table.
He was watching her, his entire body motionless. It didn't strike her that she should be afraid or even wary. Yawning, she walked over and sat on his lap, curling her body into the armchair. His arms came around her without hesitation, one hand curving around her shoulders, the other sliding to close over the bare skin of her upper thigh.
The sensual contact brought her to full wakefulness. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she nuzzled at his throat. "Are you okay?"
His hand shifted to slide between her thighs, surprising a shocked feminine sound out of her. "Judd? Baby?" Something was wrong. With a changeling male, she would've let her body soothe him, used touch to connect. But Judd was Psy…and hers. At that moment, she knew the answer to the question that had tormented her all day - she would hold him, accept him, no matter what.
That was what mates did.
She didn't care if there was no bond - no one was going to tell her she wasn't meant to be with this man. "What do you want?" she asked, but he remained silent. Deciding ~ Nalini Singh

Far from merely being a larger England, the United States had become something quite different: an incubator of lost or diluted British freedoms. As the Liberty Bell was originally cast in England but rang out in America, so those guarantees of the 'rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural-born subjects' have found their truest expression across the Atlantic. 'That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy,' wrote George Orwell in 1941. 'It is our job to see that it stays there.' In Britain and beyond, that rifle has long been taken away. England's bell has fallen silent. Americans would do well to ensure that the crack in theirs grows no larger. ~ Charles C.W. Cooke

I thought of the stone angel. I pictured the snow falling over it, two classes of snow rising on the top of its wings. So silent, the both of them, the angel and the snow. I pretended I was the stone angel. I close my eyes and pretended as hard as I could, and after a while I was convinced I could feel wings sprouting from my shoulders. I wanted to look, to see my wings, but I was an angel stone, so I could not move. ~ Jerry Spinelli

At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe. ~ Chris Van Allsburg

We should naturally expect that the baptism of infants, if enjoined at all, would have been enjoined in the law which instituted the ordinance of Christian baptism. But this law is silent on the subject of infants. ~ Adoniram Judson

Jina Matthews, who worked at the cubicle directly beside Carlin's, wasn't having a good way, either. She was on her phone, her expression tense. She and her boyfriend had been fighting a lot lately, and it looked as if Jina was at the end of her rope. She said a few choice words, then thumbed a button on her phone. Looking across the aisle at Carlin, she made a wry face.
"It was so much more satisfying when you could slam a phone down. Pushing a button just doesn't have the same gratification factor." Her phone, set to vibrate, buzzed around on the desk as another call came in. Jina picked it up, looked at the caller ID, and jabbed the button again. "Unless it's the off button." She leaned forward and spoke to the silent phone. "Call all you want, jackass. I can't hear you," she said in a singsong falsetto. ~ Linda Howard

There were monsters abroad, there was no denying it - but what of the thousands of people in Thebes and in the rest of Egypt who had not robbed tombs?
The tally of those who had not bowed to greed far outweighed that of those who had. It was easy to forget that fact amid the horror of the acts of the guilty. Wenatef had lost sight it for a time, but now it was as though he were surrounded by a great, silent multitude: the honorable and faithful ones who had not done wrong. ~ Diana Wilder

Perhaps I shall not write my account of the Paleolithic at all, but make a film of it. A silent film at that, in which I shall show you first the great slumbering rocks of the Cambrian period, and move from those to the mountains of Wales ... from Ordovician to Devonian, on the lush glowing Cotswolds, on to the white cliffs of Dover ... An impressionistic, dreaming film, in which the folded rocks arise and flower and grow and become Salisbury Cathedral and York Minster ... ~ Penelope Lively

Not everyone has a voice. Many outsiders cannot speak through walls, and, as a consequence, they become silent and invisible. Some give up their voices willingly. Others cannot face the ferocious silence of their lives; so they replace their genuine voices with incomprehensible shrieks of rage. They bombard the wall with wrath or batter it with explosives. The silence is broken by their rage, but nothing changes. They remain outsiders who are desperate to be allowed into the world. ~ Jamake Highwater

We had approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. ~ Joseph Conrad

1) Everyone nodded in silent agreement,
and then one by one
disappeared into the castle's dark shadows
where night met blackened air
and creepy things
whispered the most haunting words into the wind. ~ Kenya Wright

Maisie was next, and stepped up to vote. She wondered how many hands had trembled already today, holding their pencils over the ballots, with all the little boxes. Did most women take to their new, belated right with aplomb, or did they take their time, marveling over the beauty of it all, the silent speech that would be heard?
Or did they think, like she did, that there was a long queue behind her and she had to get to work.
She wrote a thick X, drew over it twice, and dropped the paper in the ballot box.
That's how you spell a shout. With an X. ~ Sarah Jane Stratford

His brain had been a glass ball. Nothing in it but echoes. His mother's scent. Father's voice. How Anireh's gaze had held him from across the room, and her eyes said, Survive. They said, Love, and I'm sorry. They said, Little brother.
And then silence. It became silent in Arin's head as he stood on the road. He stopped hearing voices. He thought about how it had seemed strange that Risha would plot the emperor's death, yet refuse to kill him herself. Arin understood now. He knew how it was to have no family: like living in a house with no roof. Even if Kestrel were here, and begged him - Let your sword fall, do it, please, now - Arin wasn't sure that he could make her an orphan. ~ Marie Rutkoski

July 1st
It's as though everything stood still. There is no movement, no stirring, complete emptiness of all thought, of all seeing. There is no interpreter to translate, to observe, to censor. An immeasurable vastness that is utterly still and silent. There is no space, nor time to cover that space. The beginning and the ending are here, of all things. There is really nothing that can be said about it.
The pressure and the strain have been going on quietly all day; only now they have increased.

2nd
The thing which happened yesterday, that immeasurable still vastness, went on all the evening, even though there were people and general talk. It went on all night; it was there in the morning. Though there was rather exaggerated, emotionally agitated talk, suddenly in the middle of it, it was there. And it is here, there's a beauty and a glory and there's a sense of wordless ecstasy.
The pressure and the strain began rather early.

3rd
Been out all day. All the same, in a crowded town in the afternoon, for two or three hours the pressure and the strain of it was on.

4th
Been busy, but in spite of it, the pressure and the strain of it was there in the afternoon.
Whatever actions one has to do in daily life, the shocks and the various incidents should not leave their scars. These scars become the ego, the self, and as one lives, it becomes strong and its walls almost become impenetrable.

5th
Been too ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

When we separate the word business into its component letters, B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S, we find that U and I are both in it. In fact, if U and I were not in business, it would not be business. Furthermore, we discover that U comes before I in business and the I is silent-it is to be seen, not heard. Also, the U in business has the sound of I, which indicates it is an amalgamation of the interests of U and I. When they are properly amalgamated, business becomes harmonious, profitable, and pleasant. ~ Zig Ziglar

Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone: not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence." The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. ~ Charlotte Bronte

And the mist of snow, as he had foreseen, was still on it - a ghost of snow falling in the bright sunlight, softly and steadily floating and turning and pausing, soundlessly meeting the snow that covered, as with a transparent mirage, the bare bright cobbles. He loved it - he stood still and loved it. Its beauty was paralyzing - beyond all words, all experience, all dream. No fairy-story he had ever read could be compared with it - none had ever given him this extraordinary combination of ethereal loveliness with a something else, unnameable, which was just faintly and deliciously terrifying.
("Silent Snow, Secret Snow") ~ Conrad Aiken

Maybe I am just an empty, futile person, he thought. But it was precisely because there was nothing inside of me that these people could find, even if for a short time, a place where they belonged. Like a nocturnal bird seeks a safe place to rest during the day in a vacant attic. The birds like that empty, dim, silent place. If that were true, then maybe he should be happy he was hollow. ~ Haruki Murakami

They went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, which a fine south-easterly breeze was bringing in all the grandeur which so flat a shore admitted. They praised the morning; gloried in the sea; sympathized in the delight of the fresh-feeling breeze- and were silent ... ~ Jane Austen

When my play was with thee I never questioned who thou wert. I knew nor shyness nor fear, my life was boisterous.

In the early morning thou wouldst call me from my sleep like my own comrade and lead me running from glade to glade.

On those days I never cared to know the meaning of songs thou sangest to me. Only my voice took up the tunes, and my heart danced in their cadence.

Now, when the playtime is over, what is this sudden sight that is come upon me? The world with eyes bent upon thy feet stands in awe with all its silent stars. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today-my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent - what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness -
between you, there is nothing to forgive -
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn't matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons. ~ Jane Hirshfield