Silence and Solitude

Art: Leonid Pasternak

Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world.

—Jack Kerouac

Solitude is for me a fount of healing 
which makes my life worth living. 
Talking is often a torment for me, 
and I need many days of silence 
to recover from the futility 
of words.

—Carl Jung

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Bow down in silence to the earth,
to the trees, to the moon, to the sun.
It does not matter what the object is,
what matters is bowing down –
surrender, that feeling of gratitude.
Wherever one is full of gratitude,
there is a temple.

—Osho

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Listen, my child, to the silence.
An undulating silence,
a silence
that turns valleys and echoes slippery,
that bends foreheads
toward the ground.

—Federico García Lorca

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What kind of times are these
when a conversation about trees
is almost a crime
because it implies silence
about so many atrocities.

--Bertolt Brecht

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The desire to break the silence 
with constant human noise is, I
 believe, precisely an avoidance 
of the sacred terror of that 
divine encounter.

--Matsuo Basho

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