Norman Cousins Quotes

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

Thought will not work except in silence.

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'.

Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.

Silence is refreshment for the soul.

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.

I like the idea of going to one of those retreats where you don't speak - like, silence for five days.

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.

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.

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

The appetite for silence is seldom an acquired taste.

Take time to be quiet.

Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. We need hours of aimless wandering or spates of time sitting on park benches, observing the mysterious world of ants and the canopy of treetops.

I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people, listening to music.

Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.

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.

I just want silence... Jesus, it doesn't mean I don't like you. It just means right now, I like silence more.

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

There is a way to master silence Control its curves, inhabit its dark corners And listen to the hiss of time outside

As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn't in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics.

Thoughts shut up want air, And spoil, like bales unopen'd to the sun.

But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting—that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open—shut up the mind's eye—all will be music!

Meditation is silence. Silence is God In His Infinity's Smile.

I used to think anxiety and insomnia drove me to success, but it was the stillness that let me be good at anything. When you extend the seconds of stillness, that's when you're able to think and learn.