Carson McCullers Quotes

He makes a solitude, and calls it - peace!

As before, there is a great silence, with no end in sight. The writer surrenders, listening.

Take time to be quiet.

Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in his beauty deigns to walk.

More and more I find myself at a loss for words and didn't want to hear other people talking either. Their conversations seemed false and empty. I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.

The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world,--words with little meaning, actions with little worth,--one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence.

Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.

Your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes, far in the distance.

There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.

I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard. Everyone has a listening point somewhere. It does not have to be in the north or close to the wilderness, but someplace of quiet where the universe can be contemplated with awe.

I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.

The appetite for silence is seldom an acquired taste.

Silence has a regenerative power of its own. It is always sacred. It always returns you home.

The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking! ... I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

Now I am past all comforts here, but prayer.

Though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though the carpet were of silk, the curtains of the morning clouds; the chairs and sofa stuffed with cygnet's down; the food manna, the wine beyond claret, the window opening on Winander Mere, I should not feel -or rather my happiness would not be so fine, as my solitude is sublime.

Silence must be comprehended as not solely the absence of sound. It is the natural environment for serenity and contemplation. Life without silence is life without privacy. The difference between sanity and madness is the quality of our thoughts. Silence is on the side of sanity.

Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.

The teaching arises out of the stillness. But when I'm alone, there's only the stillness, and that is my favorite place.

Now it is time to sit quiet, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

Wisdom grows in quiet places.

The silence was always the greates temptation.