God is pure silence

• God is to creation as silence is to sound. Mark R. Woodward
• Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter. Buster Keaton
• God is silent. Everything comes out of silence. Mother Meera
• I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods. Georg Trakl
• Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness. Meister Eckhart
• One of the great things silence does, it gives us a new concept of God. Calvin Miller
• Well might the ancients make silence a god; for it is the element of all godhood, infinitude, or transcendental greatness,–at once the source and the ocean wherein all such begins and ends. Thomas Carlyle
• God is that which is indivisible… that which is indivisible in our physical experience is called silence. And when you get into silence, you’re coming to know the indivisibleness of your life – and that’s conscious contact. Wayne Dyer
• When thou art quiet and silent, then art thou as God was before nature and creature; thou art that which God then wats; thou art that whereof he made thy nature and creature: Then thou hearest and seest even with that wherewith God himself saw and heard in thee, before every thine own willing or thine own seeing began. Jakob Bohme

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Silence is the language of God

• Silence is God’s first language. John of the Cross
• Silence is the only Voice of our God. Herman Melville
• Silence is the only language god speaks. Charles Simic
• God is silent. Now if only man would shut up. Woody Allen
• The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude. Thomas Merton
• Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation. Rumi
• Silence is the language of eternity; noise passes. Gertrud von Le Fort
• God’s first language is Silence. Everything else is a translation. Thomas Keating
• Silence is God’s language, and it’s a very difficult language to learn. Thomas Keating
• Every day, God has something to say to you. Even when He seems to be quiet, God is still saying something. T. B. Joshua
• God’s voice is still and quiet and easily buried under an avalanche of clamour. Charles Stanley
• The language of silence is the language of God, the language of silence is the language of the heart. Sivananda
• Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul’s language. Fulton J. Sheen
• God’s silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses, we are in a very elementary condition of grace. Oswald Chambers
• I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of Him is a long, long, and awful thing that the whole world is lost because of. Tennessee Williams
• God’s poet is silence! His song is unspoken, And yet so profound, so loud, and so far, It fills you, it thrills you with measures unbroken, And as soft, and as fair, and as far as a star. Joaquin Miller
• In order to understand God, you have to learn to listen. You’re thoughts talk very loudly all the time. But God is very, very, very quiet. God doesn’t speak through words or thoughts. God doesn’t speak. God is silent. Frederick Lenz
• God will of necessity always be a hidden God. His loudest cry is silence. If he does not manifest himself to us, we will say that he hides himself. And if he manifests himself, we will accuse him of veiling himself. Ah! it is not easy for God to make himself known to us! Louis Evely
• Our contemplative ancestors taught us to live and thrive when our God is unknown and unknowable. Theirs was the wisdom that God’s primary language is silence, and that we discover a vibrant faith soaking in the silence of meditation and contemplation. They introduced us to the spirituality of a God beyond images and metaphors. We use the word “apophatic” to describe this part of our spiritual tradition. Through the centuries, we’ve developed contemplative practices that awaken us to the Divine Presence beyond our mind’s ability to contain. Doug Hammack

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Silence contains the power of God

• Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy. Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word. The unmanifested is present in this world as silence. All you have to do is pay attention to it. Eckhart Tolle

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Silence draws us close to God

• God works through silence. Robert A Russell
• Even God used silence as a strategy. Gregory Maguire
• God speaks in the silence of the heart. Mother Teresa
• There’s no match for the silence of GOD. Nicole Krauss
• We need silence to be able to touch souls. Mother Teresa
• Don’t misinterpret God’s silence as rejection. B. Joshua
• Silence is the pause in me when I am near to God. Arvo Part
• I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods. Georg Trakl
• In the silence of our hearts, God speaks of His love. Mother Teresa
• The louder our world today is, the deeper God seems to remain in silence.
• In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience. Thomas Merton
• Silence alone is respectable and respected. I believe God to be silence. Henry Adams
• In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God. Maud Hart Lovelace
• If I go deep enough into this stillness and silence inside of me, I reach a place that is called God. Barry Long
• The best reminder that the silence of God doesn’t equal the absence of God. Tullian Tchividjian
• God is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration. Rajneesh
• If you want to find God, hang out in the space between your thoughts. Alan Cohen
• The lover of silence draws close to God. He talks to Him in secret and God enlightens him. John Climacus
• The ancient spiritual tradition is that God gives himself fully to us in silence and solitude. Brennan Manning
• The friend of silence comes close to God. In secret he converses with him and receives his light. John Climacus
• If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks. S. Eliot
• If we have not silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest God, does not bless our work. Thomas Merton
• Deeply I go down into myself. My god is Dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence. Rainer Maria Rilke
• In … silence we find a new energy and a real unity. God’s energy becomes our, allowing us to perform things well. Mother Teresa
• By being peaceful, quiet, and receptive, you pattern yourself in the image of God, and you regain the power of your Source. Wayne Dyer
• Coming before God in quietness and waiting upon Him in silence often can accomplish more than days of feverish activity. Aiden Wilson Tozer
• God of wilderness, God of wildness, lead me to the quiet places of my soul. In stillness, in openness, may I find my strength. Jan L. Richardson
• God has special confidences for each soul. Indeed, it would seem as though the deepest truths came only in moments of profound devotional silence and contemplation. Charles Brent
• Through endless time God’s greatest gift is continuously given in silence. But when mankind becomes completely deaf to the thunder of His Silence God incarnates as Man. Meher Baba
• Something is happening because of silence, because of peace, because of silence; if your mind is silent, if your mind is quiet, there is God, there is silence, this is the silence that is contagious. W. L. Poonja
• I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree. Elie Wiesel
• As with most great communicators, God knows that the point of silence and the pause between sentences is not to give the audience the chance to fill the silence with empty babbling but to help create more depth to the conversation. Renita J. Weems
• Emptiness is only a disguise for an intimacy of God’s, that God’s silence, the eerie stillness, is filled by the Word without words, by Him who is above all names, by Him who is all in all. And his silence is telling us that He is here. Karl Rahner
• God has been everlastingly working in Silence, unobserved, unheard, except by those who experience His Infinite Silence. Those who have got the courage and wisdom to surrender themselves to a Perfect Master are the recipients of His Grace. Meher Baba
• When we discover the secret of being inwardly at worship while outwardly at work, we find that the soul’s silence brings us to God and God to us. Silence takes us beyond the limits of consciousness and into the heart and mind and will of God. Brent Bill
• 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. Mother Teresa
• Take some time to be silent and repeat the sound of God as an inner mantra. Meditation allows you to make conscious contact with your Source and achieve success in every area. If a problem arises, then go within, get very quiet about it and find the answers inside of you. Wayne Dyer
• Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve, which afterward shapes life, and mixes itself with action, is the fruit of those sacred, solitary moments. There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone. Frederick William Robertson
• 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, It is in lonely solitude that God delivers His best thoughts, and the mind needs to be still and quiet to receive them. Charles R. Swindoll
• We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally; to be alone with Him — not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything — to dwell lovingly in His presence, silent, empty, expectant, and motionless. We cannot find God in noise or agitation. Mother Teresa
• Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality. Thomas Merton
• My times of silence before God are very important to me now. I put everything else down, every word away, and I am with the Lord. When I’m quiet, life falls into perspective for me. I have a very active mind and I’m a worrier, but in those moments when I choose to put that away, I rest beside the Shepherd in still places. Why don’t you give yourself a gift today? Turn off the television or the car stereo, put down the newspaper or the business plan, and in the quietness, rest for a while beside the Shepherd of your soul. Sheila Walsh
• If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence. Since God cannot be imagined, anything our imagination tells us about Him is ultimately a lie and therefore we cannot know Him as He really is unless we pass beyond everything that can be imagined and enter into an obscurity without images and without the likeness of any created thing. Thomas Merton

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The best prayer is silence

• The fruit of Silence is Prayer. Mother Teresa
• A season of silence is the best preparation for speech with God. Samuel Chadwick
• Silence is the mother of prayer and the nurse of holy thoughts. Elisabeth Elliot
• There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone. Frederick William Robertson
• Today don’t beg, don’t ask, just thank God in silence for all the blessings in your life. Paulo Coelho
• Prayer is speaking to God – but sometimes He uses our times of prayerful silence to speak to us in return. Billy Graham
• Some prayers are followed by silence (from God) because they are wrong, others because they are bigger than one can understand. Oswald Chambers
• The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication. Bernadette Roberts
• Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise. Richard Rohr
• In prayerful silence you must look into your own heart. No one can tell you better than yourself what comes between you and God. Ask yourself. Then listen! Johannes Tauler
• God’s poet is silence! His song is unspoken, And yet so profound, so loud, and so far, It fills you, it thrills you with measures unbroken, And as soft, and as fair, and as far as a star. Joaquin Miller
• I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence-we need to listen to God because it’s not what we say but what He says to us and through us that matters. Mother Teresa
• In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. Mother Teresa
• It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God’s voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him. William Barclay
• The soul which has come into intimate contact with God in the silence of the prayer chamber is never out of conscious touch with the Father; the heart is always going out to Him in loving communion, and the moment the mind is released from the task upon which it is engaged, it returns as naturally to God as the bird does to its nest. Edward McKendree Bounds
• The disciplines of prayer, silence, and contemplation as practiced by the monastics and mystics are precisely that – stopping the noise, slowing down, and becoming still so that God can break through all our activity and noise to speak to us. Prayer serves to put all parts of our lives in God’s presence, reminding us how holy our humanity really is. Jim Wallis
• The beginning of prayer is silence. If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks. And to be able to see that silence, to be able to hear God we need a clean heart; for a clean heart can see God, can hear God, can listen to God; and then only from the fullness of our heart can we speak to God. But we cannot speak unless we have listened, unless we have made that connection with God in the silence of our heart. Mother Teresa
• Prayer can assume very different forms, from quiet, blessed contemplation of God, in which eye meets eye in restful meditation, to deep sighs or sudden exclamations of wonder, joy, gratitude or adoration. Ole Hallesby
• We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noises and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature-trees, flowers, grass-grow in silence. Is not our mission to give God to those we walk with? Not a dead God, but a living, loving God. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in active life. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. Words that don’t give the light of Christ increase the darkness. Mother Teresa

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In silence, meditate on God

• When you meditate, the silence of the senses illumines the presence of God within. Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
• The important aim in Christian meditation is to allow God’s mysterious and silent presence within us to become more and more not only a reality but the reality which gives meaning, shape and purpose to everything we do, everything we are. John Main
• And then, in that regal silence, finally – I began to meditate on (and with) God. Elizabeth Gilbert

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Be silent and listen for God’s whisper

• Let us be silent — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• It is only in the depths of silence that the voice of God can be heard. Sai Baba
• Words engage our minds, but in the silence we hear the Presence of God. Ram Dass
• Friends, do not be afraid of silence or stillness. Listen to God. Pope Benedict XVI
• You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind. Sathya Sai Baba
• Keep silence, be mute. If you have not yet become the tongue of GOD, be an ear! Rumi
• Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart. Mother Teresa
• Only in silence does man succeed in hearing in the depth of his conscience the voice of God. Pope John Paul II
• Listen in silence because if your heart is full of other things you cannot hear the voice of God. Mother Teresa
• In silence and in meditation on the eternal truths, I hear the voice of God which excites our hearts to greater love. S. Lewis
• I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God. Soren Kierkegaard
• The silence that makes it possible to hear God speak also makes it possible for us to hear the world’s words for what they really are – tinny and unconvincing lies. Eugene H. Peterson
• Silence of the heart is necessary so you can hear God everywhere – in the closing of the door, in the person who needs you, in the birds that sing, in the flowers, in the animals. Mother Teresa
• The very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within. Therefore it is said: ‘In the midst of silence the secret word was spoken to me’. Meister Eckhart
• Writing is like praying, because you stop all other activities, descend into silence, and listen patiently to the depths of your soul, waiting for true words to come. When they do, you thank God because you know the words are a gift, and you write them down as honestly and cleanly as you can. Helen Prejean
• We need silence to be alone with God, to speak to him, to listen to him, to ponder his words deep in our hearts. We need to be alone with God in silence to be renewed and transformed. Silence gives us a new outlook on life. In it we are filled with the energy of God himself that makes us do all things with joy. Mother Teresa
• We need to remember to teach our children that solitude can be a much-to-be-desired condition. Not only is it acceptable to be alone; at times it is positively to be wished for…..In the silence we listen to ourselves. Then we ask questions of ourselves. We describe ourselves to ourselves, and in the quietude we may even hear the voice of God. Maya Angelou
• If I want to heal the ache and loneliness in my own life, one of the things I need to do is get away, alone with God. . . . In the silence God will speak to you most powerfully. Too often his words to us get muffled, lost, or covered by the crowd of many noises both inside and outside of us. We must have a quiet heart in order to hear God’s distinctive message to us. Tim Hansel
• In this noisy, restless, bewildering age, there is a great need for quietness of spirit. Even in our communion with God we are so busy presenting our problems, asking for help, seeking relief that we leave no moments of silence to listen for God’s answers. By practice we can learn to submerge our spirits beneath the turbulent surface waves of life and reach that depth of our being where all is still, where no storms can reach us. Here only can we forget the material world and its demands on us. Alice Hegan Rice

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The path to God is through being quiet

• Faith isn’t about having everything figured out ahead of time; faith is about following the quiet voice of God without having everything figured out ahead of time. Rachel Held Evans
• The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It happens quietly. It happens inevitably. Don’t underestimate God’s power. Alistair Begg
• The seed of God’s Word won’t grow to fruitfulness without pruning for rest, quiet, and calm. Kevin DeYoung
• God is not usually a burning bush in my life. He’s usually a very quiet whisper. And he never shows up too early…but he’s also never late, either. Anne Marie Miller
• The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be. Anne Frank
• Often times God wants us to sit before Him in quietness. He doesn’t want us to do all the talking. As Is. 30:15 says “In quiet and confidence will be your strength.” Charles Stanley
• Each time, before you intercede, be quiet first, and worship God in His glory. Andrew Murray
• But there is that certain something about wanting to do the will of God. If one is sincere and if one really wants to know what His will is, all one has to do is be quiet. Shut off the television and radio, and in that silence one will always hear that still small voice in one’s heart telling him what to do. Maria von Trapp
• Stay quiet with God. Do not spend your time in useless chatter…. Do not give yourself to others so completely that you have nothing left for yourself. Carlo Borromeo
• The prayer offered to God in the morning during your quiet time is the key that unlocks the door of the day. Adrian Rogers
• How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak. Francois Fenelon
• The presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose. Francois Fenelon
• A little quiet reflection will remind me that yes to God always leads in the end to joy. Elisabeth Elliot
• God is on the lookout today for a man who will be quiet enough to get a message from Him, brave enough to preach it, and honest enough to live it. Vance Havner
• A person whose mind is quiet and satisfied in God is in the pathway to health. Ellen G. White