Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

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.

I was at a New Year’s Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, ‚I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,‘ and I actually meant it.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

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

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

When we tell the story of our own conversion, I would have it done with great sorrow, remembering what we used to be, and with great joy and gratitude, remembering how little we deserve these things.

I don’t dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it’s gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin‘ White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It’s connected to where you are today.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

I am rather inclined to silence.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

I think we’ve taken the meaning of Christmas out. People don’t stop and think about Jesus or the birth of Jesus. When they think of Christmas, they think of Santa Claus and – for the children, and they think of giving gifts and out-giving the next person of spending their time looking for the right thing for somebody who has everything.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

Christmas is a tonic for our souls. It moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves. It directs our thoughts to giving.

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

I’m not the same man I used to be, I’m not out hell-raising, stuff like that. I am a changed man.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.