Tao Te Ching
Silence and Stillness
Quotes (83)
“Good sir, sit still and hearken to the words of others that are thy betters. (Quoted by Socrates and the cause of his indictment.)”
“Nothing in the world is faster than the mind; but the mouth is a close runner-up.”
“If what one has to say is not better than silence, then one should keep silent.”
“Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed.”
“Always when you are about to say anything, first weigh it in your mind; for with many the tongue outruns the thought. Let there be but two occasions for speech — when the subject is one which you thoroughly know and when it one on which you are compelled to speak. On these occasions alone is speech better than silence; on all others, it is better to be silent than to speak.”
“The sage’s mind is so still, it can mirror Heaven and Earth and reflect the 10,000 things.”
“The reason we have two ears and only one mouth is so we may hear more and talk less.”
“It’s because Heaven becomes one that it graces the sky with constellations and light. It’s because Earth becomes one that it remains still and immovable… It’s because kings become one that they pacify the world. But Heaven must move between yin and yang.”
“A dragon is still. Hence, it is able to constantly transform itself. A tiger is restless. Hence it dies young.”
“Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.”
“By means of tranquility, the murky becomes clear. By means of movement, the still becomes alive. This is the natural Way.”
“I never saw any lamp shining more brilliantly than the lamp of silence.”
“Stillness corresponds to nonexistence. Movement corresponds to existence. Provisionally different, they are ultimately the same. Both meet in darkness.”
“Those who meet resistance with agreement, toil with relaxation pride with humility, and action with stillness have no enemy. Wherever they go, the conquer.”
“Dharma is not found in the written word, how can one speak of it?”
“False thinking stops and stillness necessarily arises, stillness arises and wisdom appears, wisdom arises and stillness necessarily disappears”
“The primal wisdom, silent but also glorious, responds to conditions.”
“The teaching's voice is total silence amid the ringing wind chimes. The moon hangs in the old pine tree, cold in the falling night.”
“The Tao is also hard to understand and hard to put into practice… because all words are wrong, because it cannot be learned, and because the mind only leads us astray. Effortless stillness is not necessarily right, and actionless activity is not necessarily wrong.”
“I will be waiting for your silence to break, your soul to shake, and your love to wake!”
“Elsewhere, Lao-tzu extols simplemindedness and weakness over wisdom and strength. Why then does he extol wisdom and strength here? Wisdom and strength are for dealing with the inside. Simplemindedness and weakness are for dealing with the outside.”
“I am happiest when I have nothing to distract me and I am completely alone.”
“Think with the few and speak with the many… Truth is for the few, error is both common and vulgar… The wise person therefore retires into silence and if he allows himself to come out of it he does so in the shade and before few and fit persons.”
“The tongue is a wild beast – once let loose it is difficult to chain… The worst is that he who should be the most reserved is the least.”
“He than can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much, and like a god in everything.”
“Reticence is the seal of capacity… You must pay ransom to each you tell… What must be done need not be said, what must be said need not be done.”
“There was a period when I chose a time and place for prayer ... But now I seek constant prayer, in constant inward stillness” 
“The limitless sky of meditation, the clear moonlight of wisdom; the truth revealed as eternal stillness.”
“Silence is not always a sign of wisdom but babbling is ever a mark of folly.”
“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
“Tell a wise person, or else keep silent, because the mass man will mock it right away.”
“If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am its prisoner.”
“true genius… prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.”
“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.”
“Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.”
“Ole Cousin Wildcat walk all 'roun' de tree, rubbin' hisse'f, but he aint sayin' nothin'.”
“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.”
“Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.”
“I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”
“the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate,.. the totality of life of which we are a small and helpless part.”
“Silence is truth. Silence is bliss. Silence is peace. And hence Silence is the Self.”
“Therefore it is the law of the mystics to see all things, to experience all things, either of heaven or earth, and yet to say little.”
“Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.”
“A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences”
“I have a passionate love for solitude and silence; I can gaze for hours at a fire or the sea without feeling any nee for additional companionship. These have always been my most faithful, most beloved comrades... Direct contact with human beings I had always found irksome.”
“I said nothing. I had learned that this is usually the best thing to say.”
“She knew that he was a man who knew what he did and why he did it, and before such a man a woman may keep silence and know that it will be well with her.”
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.”
“A man who knows that he is silent, or knows that he loves, doesn’t know what love is, nor what silence is.”
“The English regard slackness as a vice. We, on the other hand should vastly prefer it to tension. Is there not too much tension in the world…”
“What you see with your eyes shut is what counts. The wicasa wakan loves the silence, wrapping it around himself like a blanket… he talks to the plants and they answer him.”
“There is a monastic outlook common to all who question the value of a life submitted entirely to arbitrary, secular presupposition dictated by social convention and dedication to the pursuit of temporal, mirage-like satisfactions; and instead, find something they vastly prefer in solitude.”
“he was either as brief as a gatekeeper at a Trappist monastery—sometimes for days, weeks at a stretch—or he was a non-stop talker.”
“Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people.”
“We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves.”
“the mind wanders without certainties, desolate, silent, awkward. But in that milky, dim strangeness lies the way… the way embodies the eternal beginning, the ever-springing source.”
“I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.”
“Myth provokes explanation but accepts none of it. Where explanation absorbs the unspeakable into the speakable, myth reintroduces the silence that makes original discourse possible.”
“nature's perfect silence... a silence so complete there is no way of knowing what it is silent about—if anything.”
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenements halls and whispered in the sounds of silence.”
“The more truly solitary we are, the more compassionate we can be.”
“In the tenth century BCE, the priests of India devised the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic theological discourse. The idea was to push language as far as it would go, until participants became aware of the ineffable... The winner was the contestant who reduced the others to silence. In that moment of silence, the Brahman was present... The aim of good theology is to help the audience to live for a while in that silence.”
“When trying to accomplish something serious, I liked to do it myself. Having to check things out with other people and get them to understand seemed to me a great waste of time and energy when it was a lot easier to work along in silence.”
“Some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.”
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