At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn’t speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn’t speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.

Silence is safer than speech.

There are some hurts that we experience that can be forgiven but we won’t forget them.

I am rather inclined to silence.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

I am an angel. I was sent here from God to heal.

Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body – the producers and consumers themselves.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.

Silence is a source of great strength.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

We didn’t crumble after 9/11. We didn’t falter after the Boston Marathon. But we’re America. Americans will never, ever stand down. We endure. We overcome. We own the finish line.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.

Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.

I’ve always been surrounded by many great people and professors, but my family, especially my mom who was a teacher, was the person who encouraged me to study and pushed me to continue. When we’re young, we don’t understand why our parents bug us so much with school and doing homework, but it’s a blessing to have that support at home.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Without forgiveness, there’s no future.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

Oh, come, Divine Physician, and bind up every broken bone. Come with Thy sacred nard which Thou hast compounded of Thine own heart’s blood, and lay it home to the wounded conscience and let it feel its power. Oh! Give peace to those whose conscience is like the troubled sea which cannot rest.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

I know how to swim through backlash. I can tread water through backlash… If anything, that’s all giving me power.

Have you not noticed that love is silence? It may be while holding the hand of another, or looking lovingly at a child, or taking in the beauty of an evening. Love has no past or future, and so it is with this extraordinary state of silence.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.

I’m on record that it didn’t really traumatize me to do away with some people.

Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body.

Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.

In time of war the laws are silent.

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars. You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

When you lose a person you love so much, surviving the loss is difficult.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction.

I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.

A stiff apology is a second insult… The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

I was in my late thirties when my eyes were opened to truth in God’s Word that showed me I wasn’t living the abundant life Jesus died for me to have. I had a very negative mindset and was miserable most of the time because of the abuse I had experienced throughout my childhood.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

Patience is key for getting over a breakup. That, and trailing off your interaction after the breakup.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

I was 22 when JFK was murdered, and I will never recover from it… Never.

My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.