empathetic silence Quotes

I love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences, it is a strangely alive silence, like a trap open over a well, from which one can hear the secret murmur of the earth itself.

Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.

Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)

Silence is the demon's trap, and the more one is silenced, the more terrible the demon; but silence is also the divinity's mutual understanding with the single individual.

A true test of friendship, to sit or walk with a friend for an hour in perfect silence , without wearying of one another's company.

Love, and do what you will. If you are silent, be silent for love; or if you cry out, cry out for love. If you chastise, chastise for love; if you spare, spare for love.

Sometimes being a good friend means saying nothing.

she knew she could help him best by being silent and by being near

There is a silence that matches our best possibilities when we have learned to listen to others. We can master the art of being quiet in order to be able to hear clearly what others are saying. . . . We need to cut off the garbled static of our own preoccupations to give to people who want our quiet attention.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.

With Blue here, he was beginning to feel as if possibly he'd overdone it with the helicopter. He wondered if it would make Blue feel better or worse to know that it was Helen's helicopter, that he hadn't paid anything today for the use of it. Probably worse. Remembering his vow to at least do no harm with his words, he kept his mouth shut.