Top 100 In Stillness Quotes
#1. One night I was meditating in such perfect stillness that two mosquitoes came and sat on each of my cheekbones and stayed there a long time without biting and then went away.
Jack Kerouac
#2. So it is said, for him who understands Heavenly joy, life is the working of Heaven; death is the transformation of things. In stillness, he and the yin share a single Virtue; in motion, he and the yang share a single flow.
Zhuangzi
#3. 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
#4. Only your surface is disturbed; in your deepness there is stillness and total tranquility.
Bryant McGill
#5. I had a friend who introduced me to a meditation practice which involves a couple of half-hours a day of meditation, where essentially you try to achieve a stillness that allows you to just be there in the moment.
Kenneth Branagh
#6. Something inside you emerges ... an innate, indwelling peace, stillness, aliveness. It is the unconditioned, who you are in your essence. It is what you had been looking for in the love object. It is yourself.
Eckhart Tolle
#7. {In the shadows where the ancestors sleep, the bird's song is young, but all else is old. Stillness surrounds me and I breathe softly expecting the unexpected.} from book in progress
Nancy B. Brewer
#8. Ann, I know it's hard to understand, but in that wonderful stillness, life becomes a dream and God becomes real.
Joseph Rector
#9. Sit all together in meditation. Become peacefully calm and quiet, without motion, without stillness, without birth, without destruction, without coming or going, with no judgments of right or wrong, neither staying nor going. This, then, is the Great Way.
Huineng
#10. The stillness of the water, the horizon framed by other glass towers and miniature boats drifting in the distance.
Emily St. John Mandel
#11. What will happen in your life if you accept the invitation to stillness cannot be known ... what can be known is you will have a larger capacity to truly meet whatever appears.
Gangaji
#12. Still is just the right way to be. You rise in the morning to go about your day. You remember a friend who has troubles. You don't quibble with yourself about whether to call her; you don't write a reminder on your Palm Pilot or in your planner to make the call tomorrow. You just call. Simple.
C. Terry Warner
#13. A strange stillness had settled over him, as well, a waiting. The earth was shifting beneath him, and he had the hideous suspicion that his entire life was about to change if he didn't get out of there, now. Away from the unexpected, undeniable lure of the dowdy young woman in front of him.
Anne Stuart
#14. Words created the future, exacerbated problems, raised barriers between them. But in the silence of Ford's sleep, Ford could love Dan easily; in the stillness of Ford's rest, Dan could adore him without question or fear.
Jim Grimsley
#15. Great spiritual traditions are used as a means to ripen us, to bring us face to face with our life, and to help us to see in a new way by developing a stillness of mind and a strength of heart.
Jack Kornfield
#16. Until the fear of separation is faced there can be only a life of illusion, where nothing real can exist. Until this happens there can be no knowing the stillness of peace, which is to change, in the very near future, for all humanity. The illusion of separateness can not continue to exist.
Donna Guillemette
#17. Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions ... as soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.
Jacqueline Winspear
#18. the room grew unnaturally quiet. Kote stood with his back to the room, a stillness in his body and a terrible silence clenched between his teeth.
Patrick Rothfuss
#19. When there's somebody there who is transparent enough so that the stillness comes through unhindered, there's a reciprocal movement in you because the presence of stillness suddenly recognizes itself.
Eckhart Tolle
#20. When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness, you become still yourself. You connect with it at a very deep level. You feel a oneness with whatever you perceive in and through stillness.
Eckhart Tolle
#21. The Bible is the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from the soul of man, through which, as through a window divinely opened, all men can look into the stillness of eternity, and discern in glimpses their far-distant, long-forgotten home.
Thomas Carlyle
#22. When we love the Lord and seek Him in the stillness of our hearts, He hears us and answers. - Susan E. Ramsden
Gary Chapman
#23. I think the most important quality in a birdwatcher is a willingness to stand quietly and see what comes. Our everyday lives obscure a truth about existence - that at the heart of everything there lies a stillness and a light.
Lynn Thomson
#25. When you meditate you feel joy, harmony, peace, stillness, ecstasy, laughter, certainty, courage, strength, awareness and immortality. In the beginning you will feel these things vaguely, a distant knocking at your castle door.
Frederick Lenz
#26. You know that great pause that comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness.
Anonymous
#27. A visit to the family farm in spring means witnessing growth and challenge and beauty and stillness all rolled into one.
Heidi Barr
#28. During several centuries Clochemerle, far from the cities and trade routes, had lived in stillness and isolation. But now, at last, the clamour of the great world was crossing the invisible barrier, bringing doubts, temptations, and discontents.
Gabriel Chevallier
#29. To listen to the silence, wherever you are, is an easy and direct way of becoming present. Even if there is noise, there is always some silence underneath and in between the sounds. Listening to the silence immediately creates stillness inside you.
Eckhart Tolle
#30. This moment in which you experience stillness is every moment. Don't let the mind seduce you into the past or future. Stay in the moment, and dare to consider that you can be free now.
Adyashanti
#31. Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
T. S. Eliot
#32. That stillness and vastness that enables the Universe to be, is not just out there in space ... it is also within you.
Eckhart Tolle
#33. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.
William Shakespeare
#34. When you're in the zone of your purpose with passion ... time stands still.
T.F. Hodge
#35. At some point when tending someone you love who is in pain, you reach the edge of a lake, and you look at each other with such joy at the stillness. [Letter unsent]
John Berger
#36. There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.
Carson McCullers
#37. Have lots of plants in your house. Nature and plants understand something about stillness and silence. As you interact with the green world, you will find a peace will enter your life.
Frederick Lenz
#38. There are certain ways in which I cultivate awareness, both through mindful yoga and taking care of my body and taking time to actually drop as deeply as possible into stillness, into whatever is unfolding in the present moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#39. Silence is helpful, but you don't need it in order to find stillness. Even when there is noise, you can be aware of the stillness underneath the noise, of the space in which the noise arises. That is the inner space of pure awareness, consciousness itself.
Eckhart Tolle
#40. It is the still, yellow kind of afternoon when one is apt to get stuck in a dream if one sits very quiet
Dodie Smith
#41. A man gets used to riding on at the break of day. Comes to think that movement and noise is where life is, when after all there's life in stillness and quiet too.
Kate Elliott
#42. You're not a creature in body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.
Louise Gluck
#43. A gust of wind doesn't suddenly bang a door open. A clock doesn't chime. The phone doesn't ring. Yet in the next instant the stillness breaks as if it is crystal.
Larry Watson
#44. Stillness and action are relative, not absolute, principles. It is important to find a balance of yin and yang, not just in qigong, but in everyday life. In movement, seek stillness and rest. In rest, be mindful and attentive.
Ken Cohen
#45. Everything around me goes suddenly silent, even the cicadas in the trees pausing in their incessant whirring, momentarily stunned into stillness. For a long moment I hear nothing at all, but stand frozen in a silent grey world.
Kate Lattey
#46. They who reach down into the depths of life where, in the stillness, the voice of God is heard, have the stabilizing power which carries them poised and serene through the hurricane of difficulties.
Spencer W. Kimball
#47. I would advise dancers, musicians and others in the entertainment industry to take up yoga, as it clears the mind and creates a sense of balance and stillness which is important for any performing artist.
Emmanuel Jal
#48. I now find peace in the realization that countless potential masterpieces happen each moment the world over and go unphotographed. The world owes a great debt to all those who have, from a state of exceptional awareness, preserved stillness for us to hold.
Dan Winters
#49. Therefore: In dwelling, choose modest quarters, in thinking, value stillness, in dealing with others, be kind, in choosing words, be sincere, in leading, be just, in working, be competent, in acting, choose the correct timing. Follow these words and there will be no error.
Laozi
#50. The secret of the receptive Must be sought in stillness; Within stillness there remains The potential for action.
Sun Bu'er
#51. The snow whispered down in the stillness and the sparks rose and dimmed and died in the eternal blackness.
Cormac McCarthy
#52. Not forever can one enjoy stillness and peace. But misfortune and obstruction are not final. When the grass has been burnt by the fire of the steppe, it will grow anew in summer.
Jean Sasson
#53. In stillness, we find our peace. Knowing peace at home, we bring peace into the world.
Katrina Kenison
#54. I have this one little life to live with, it's not the plan I had in mind but I can accept its the calling of my soul. The irony in gaining freedom through the heartbreak of stillness.
Nikki Rowe
#55. The Great Way has no gate. Clear water has no taste. The tongue has no bone. In complete stillness, a stone girl is dancing.
Seungsahn
#56. THE MOMENT OF DECISION is the loneliest in human life. It must be come upon in stillness and darkness and brooding thoughts and doubts torn out from the deep reaches of the soul.
Leon Uris
#57. Currents of energy shimmer through our bodies. Like shooting stars, we rocket through spacious stillness. But this silent, unmoving background is nothing like the granite ideas we use trying to take root in groundless soil.
Anthony Lawlor
#58. There's April in her hair. Motion and stillness. Wings and earth. There are tears, and there is ... friendship. There is velvet, and traveling, and distance, bones and blood, summer coming again as it always does, love.
Laura Kasischke
#59. And in the stillness of the room you heard the roar and howl and crash of the great river whose flood had caught them land shaken them and brought Magnolia Ravenal to bed ahead of her time.
Edna Ferber
#60. Who acts in stillness finds stillness in his life.
Lao-Tzu
#61. And so Gotama wandered into the town to obtain alms, and the two Samanas recognized him only by his complete peacefulness of demeanor, by the stillness of his form, in which there was no seeking, no will, no counterfeit, no effort - only light and peace.
Hermann Hesse
#62. The more positive action you take grounded in presence (stillness), the more effective you will become in your line of duty, work or social life.
Christopher Dines
#63. I've never meditated in my life. I don't practice yoga nor any religion. I'm a tourist on the realm of stillness.
Pico Iyer
#64. Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.
Eckhart Tolle
#65. There was this hot, yellowy stillness the air always got in the minutes before the last bell, as if it were stiffening itself to be shattered.
Garth Risk Hallberg
#66. You probably can't get much closer to God than serving a congregation 24/7. At the same time, there's a different kind of closeness in this present life I have in which I have much more freedom to come and go and to engage some of the silence and stillness and solitude that I was missing before.
Barbara Brown Taylor
#67. I had forgotten how gently time passes in Paris. As lively as the city is, there's a stillness to it, a peace that lures you in. In Paris, with a glass of wine in your hand, you can just be.
Kristin Hannah
#68. Some element in the air between us changed, as though a wind that had been blowing gently had come to an abrupt stillness.
Tan Twan Eng
#69. But one needs to bear in mind that things are not always what they seem and, contrary to the dead stillness of a photograph, reality is in a state of perpetual flux.
Audur Ava Olafsdottir
#70. Then at night the general stillness is more impressive than any sound, but occasionally you hear the note of an owl farther or nearer in the woods, and if near a lake, the semihuman cry of the loons at their unearthly revels.
Henry David Thoreau
#71. No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.
Karen Blixen
#72. The stillness of the early morning scene enables me to take in and enjoy many things which pass me by during the bustle of the day. First, there are the scents, which seem even more generous with their offerings than they are in the evening.
Rosemary Verey
#73. Stillness alone is the potentiality for creativity; movement alone is creativity restricted to a certain aspect of its expression. But the combination of movement and stillness enables you to unleash your creativity in all directions-wherever the power of your attention takes you.
Deepak Chopra
#74. Eric Erikson writes that in their search for identity, adolescents need a place of stillness, a place to gather themselves.
Sherry Turkle
#75. Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don't need to carry it around with you after you've crossed the river.
Eckhart Tolle
#76. There are different worlds, endless worlds, and different beings come from different worlds. In my particular case, I come from the stillness. We call it the dharmakaya, the clear light of reality. I know it quite well.
Frederick Lenz
#77. There is in stillness oft a magic power To calm the breast when struggling passions lower, Touched by its influence, in the soul arise Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.
John Henry Newman
#78. If there were a silent observer, Mirabelle would be seen as a carefree, happy girl who is preparing for a night on the town. But in reality, these activities are the physical manifestations of her stillness.
Steve Martin
#79. One can observe that such changes in the breath are the direct result of your reaction to thoughts. If you can simply dismiss the thoughts by giving them no value then the breathing will find its own medium and become subtle.
Stephen Richards
#80. Where should the scholar live? In solitude, or in society? in the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of Nature beat, or in the dark, gray town where he can hear and feel the throbbing heart of man?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#81. If the Lord sets you to guard a lonely post in perfect stillness from all active work, you ought to be just as content as to be in the midst of the active warfare. It is no virtue to love the Master's work better than the Master's will.
Hannah Whitall Smith
#82. Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
#83. Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.
Patrick Rothfuss
#84. Nothing stays
not even change,
That can grow tired
of it's own name;
The very thought
too much for it.
Somewhere in air
a stillness is,
So far, so thin-
But let it alone.
Whoever we are
it is not for us
Mark Van Doren
#85. There is no waiting and no delayed gratification because yoga is both the means and the result, and the seed of all that is possible is present at the very beginning. This experience of stillness is possible in the first ten minutes of your first yoga class. It is possible in this very breath.
Donna Farhi
#86. She was like a wounded animal, he thought, looking at her. Fear and pain were in every line of her - in the taut stillness of her form and in her watchful, wary stare. She wanted to be alone, to lick her wounds, and though she'd been that way all along, he couldn't let her stay that way.
Laura Lee Guhrke
#87. Only in stillness does the imperceivable become discernible
Bryant McGill
#88. Sometimes at night, when I was alone, or when I was at the pool, in the quiet stillness underwater, my mind would go to that place. To the hospital, to the people there. It was as if my heart could travel, over the miles, over the months that had passed, and I was back with her. Olivia
Cylin Busby
#89. In the stillness I find my heart growing hot while I seek the person I have already found. God is so much more than I know.
Eric Samuel Timm
#90. Possessing strength and stillness is a sign of balance: power and serenity combined in one moment. It's challenging enough to hold either one, let alone both, in perfect equipoise, but that is the goal if we want to be balanced.
Sebastian Pole
#91. In stillness the muddied water returns to clarity.
Laozi
#93. There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe.
Mervyn Peake
#94. Hopefully there will come a time when I have no words, when I can honor and hold that kind of stillness that I so need, crave, and desire in the natural world.
Terry Tempest Williams
#95. As long as you cultivate stillness, you may enjoy peace, but whenever your mind is a little bit disturbed, deluded thoughts will set in again.
Sogyal Rinpoche
#96. Presence remains even amidst worldly activities. Stillness is there even when you're doing something quickly, like rushing to answer the phone. Otherwise you would be condemned to moving in slow motion.
Eckhart Tolle
#97. I understood in a moment of stillness,' Litima read. 'Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate.
Brandon Sanderson
#98. There are a sort of men, whose visages
Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond;
And do a willful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity profound conceit;
As who should say, I am sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!
William Shakespeare
#99. All morning the
Morning has been blackening,
A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.
They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.
Sylvia Plath
#100. that of the mind is in abysmal stillness;
Lao-Tzu
