Pico Iyer Quotes

Stillness empowers. Being able to detach from all external stimulants - social media, social engagements, TV, alcohol, food, etc. - and face our own silence is an enormous luxury that should not be taken for granted. The most rewarding moments in my life have stemmed from such stillness.

If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.

I've found throughout the years that I needed a place where I can go with no TV, no computer, no phone and just have no distractions and just be able to sit and think and just not be disturbed.

Time and silence are the most luxurious things today.

Take time to be quiet. This is something that we don't do enough in this busy world of ours. We rush, rush, rush, and we are constantly listening to noise all around us. The human heart was meant for times of quiet, to peer deep within. It is when we do this that our hearts are set free to soar and take flight on the wings of our own dreams! Schedule some quiet "dream time" this week. No other people. No cell phone. No computer. Just you, a pad, a pen, and your thoughts.

Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.

Silence is deeply important in all of our lives.

I aspire only to silence.

We get sucked into the Internet and streaming information, and it's time to just unplug and look within.

Some of the most powerful times are when we're quiet.

Short of taking monastic vows or trekking into the Kalahari, a freighter passage might just offer what our relentlessly connected age has made difficult, if not impossible: splendid isolation.

Silence is the most powerful state.

I always run without music. Being disconnected is what I'm addicted to more than anything. There aren't many places where you can be without your phone and computer. I've started to crave and enjoy that time alone.

The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions; the trick to living alone up here, away from all agitating entanglements, allurements, and expectations, apart especially from one's own intensity, is to organize the silence, to think of its mountaintop plenitude as capital, silence as wealth exponentially increasing. The encircling silence as your chosen source of advantage and your only intimate.

Solitude matters. And for some people it's the air they breathe.

I feel that I need to return to the pure stillness periodically. And then, when the teaching happens, just allow it to arise out of the stillness. So the teaching and stillness are very closely connected. The teaching arises out of the stillness. But when I'm alone, there's only the stillness, and that is my favorite place.

There are few times that I feel more at peace, more in tune, more Zen, if you will, than when I force myself to unplug.

I must try to be alone for part of each year...and part of each day...in order to keep my core, my center...Women must be still as the axis of a wheel in the midst of her activities. She must be the pioneer of achieving this stillness, not only for her own salvation, but for the salvation of family life, of society, perhaps even of our civilization.

Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think.

No-one can function properly without occasional peace and quiet.

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

There is much to be said for solitude.

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.

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

Ground yourself, strip yourself down, To blind loving Silence