Annie Dillard Quotes

Souls of prayer are souls of great silence

Friends, do not be afraid of silence or stillness. Listen to God. Adore Him in the Eucharist.

Silence is the pause in me when I am near to God.

Love said to me, there is nothing that is not me. Be silent.

By and by... there are more and more gaps of silence. Through those gaps, windows will open to the divine.

There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone.

A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized prayer is listening.

The disciplines of prayer, silence, and contemplation as practiced by the monastics and mystics are precisely that - stopping the noise, slowing down, and becoming still so that God can break through all our activity and noise to speak to us. Prayer serves to put all parts of our lives in God's presence, reminding us how holy our humanity really is.

The fruit of Silence is Prayer.

When I was in my mid-20s, I traveled a lot around the world, and the question I had for everyone I talked to was, 'What is your conception of God?' I found that everybody basically felt the same: God is within and without. He's in everything.

You are within God. God is within you.

When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.

When a human being becomes so still that they begin to lose awareness of their gender, and they are simply looking into that abyss where there is no notion of self whatsoever, the world disappears. And that's really the only place to go. It's the only place to remain.

Sufi music talks about connecting people. It talks about connecting hearts and connecting man with God. Everything that talks about connection is Sufi.

The world thirsts for grace. When grace descends, the world falls silent before it.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noises and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature-trees, flowers, grass-grow in silence. Is not our mission to give God to those we walk with? Not a dead God, but a living, loving God. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in active life. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. Words that don't give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand.

The first requirement for prayer is silence. People of prayer are people of silence.

Everybody prays whether [you think] of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else s pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way.

Coming before God in quietness & waiting upon Him in silence often can accomplish more than days of feverish activity.

The beginning of prayer is silence.

God's first language is Silence. Everything else is a translation.

God is not a thing to be achieved, but a thing to be.

The divine is in all things.

He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God.