Karen Armstrong Quotes

Silence is so accurate.

Applause, it's very nice, of course. But when you're giving, and creating, and then there is the silence of everyone sitting there, listening, waiting, that is great.

Silence is the most powerful state.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the thing you can't hear, and not bothering.

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

I grow silent. Dear soul, you speak.

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.

It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.

Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen.

If you're trying to find out what's coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen.

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.

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.

Nothing is more useful than silence.

To-morrow will give some food for thought.

Prayer is like a secret garden made up of silence and rest and inwardness. But there are a thousand and one doors into this garden and we all have to find our own.

Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and listen. No more is needed.

It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.

Everything was quiet, a strange sort of quiet that felt like an unfinished sentence.

To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words- to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent talking. It is not, by itself, open to the discovery of anything new, for its only novelties are simply arrangements of old words and ideas.

To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam.

One develops an instinct for letting silence do the heavy lifting. In the three, four, five seconds that passed without either of us speaking, the many ways the conversation could go came and went like time-lapse film of flowers blooming and dying.

As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music.

But now I have learned to listen to silence. To hear its choirs singing the song of ages, chanting the hymns of space, and disclosing the secrets of eternity.