The Saints on the Need for Silence
"In this oasis of quiet, before the wonderful spectacle of nature, one easily experiences how profitable silence is, a good that today is ever more rare... In reality, only in silence does man succeed in hearing in the depth of his conscience the voice of God, which really makes him free. And vacations can help to rediscover and cultivate this indispensable interior dimension of human life."
- Saint John Paul II
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“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.”
- Saint Teresa of Calcutta
"What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God with our appetite and with our tongue, for the language he best hears is silent love."
- Saint John of the Cross
"In order to hear the voice of God, one has to have silence in one's soul and to keep silence; not a gloomy silence but an interior silence; that is to say, recollection in God."
- Saint Faustina
“Retiring into silence and solitude, man, so to speak, is ‘exposed’ to reality in his nakedness.” This allows man to experience “the fullness, the presence of God, of the most real Reality that there is, and that is beyond the dimension of the senses.”
- Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
"This silence then, will break forth in a charity that overflows in the service of the neighbor without counting the cost. It will witness to Christ anywhere, always. Availability will become delightsome and easy, for in each person the soul will see the face of her Love. Hospitality will be deep and real, for a silent heart is a loving heart, and a loving heart is a hospice for the world.”
- Catherine Doherty
"Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation. In order to hear that language, we must learn to be still and to rest in God.."
- Thomas Keating
"If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence."
- Soren Kierkegaard
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
