Appreciating Silence

Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive or quite and calm.... One of the greatest sounds of them all - and to me it is a sound - is utter, complete silence.
-Andre Kostelanetz

All noise is waste. So cultivate quietness in your speech, in your thoughts, in your emotions. Speak habitually low. Wait for attention and then your low words will be charged with dynamite.
-Elbert Hubbard

Now all my teachers are dead except silence.
-W.S. Merwin

The Arctic expresses the sum of all wisdom: Silence.
-Walter Bauer

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
-William Penn

Soon silence will have passed into legend. 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. . . 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