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Language signifies when instead of copying thought it lets itself be taken apart and put together again by thought. Language bears the sense of thought as a footprint signifies the movement and effort of a body. The empirical use of already established language should be distinguished from its creative use. Empirical language can only be the result of creative language. Speech in the sense of empirical language - that is, the opportune recollection of a preestablished sign – is not speech in respect to an authentic language. It is, as Mallarmé said, the worn coin placed silently in my hand. True speech, on the contrary - speech which signifies, which finally renders "l'absente de tous bouquets" present and frees the sense captive in the thing - is only silence in respect to empirical usage, for it does not go so far as to become a common noun. Language is oblique and autonomous, and if it sometimes signifies a thought or a thing directly, that is only a secondary power derived from its inner life. Like the weaver, the writer works on the wrong side of his material. He has only to do with the language, and it is thus that he suddenly finds himself surrounded by sense.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Mots clés poetry silence language phenomenology

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Slowly we became silent, and silence itself if an enemy to friendship.

Norman Maclean

Mots clés friendship friends philosophy silence enemy

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...for all its apparent speed, the ship was almost perfectly silent, and he experienced an enervating, eerie feeling, as though the ancient warship, mothballed all those centuries, had somehow not yet fully woken up, and events within its sleek hull still moved to another, slower tempo, made half of dreams.

Iain Banks

Mots clés silence dreams waking jernau-morat-gurgeh centures made-half-of-dreams mothballed warship

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How often do we talk just to fill up the quiet space? How often do we waste our breath talking about nonsense?

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

Mots clés compassion silence spirituality quiet contemplation reknewal

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In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.

Carson McCullers

Mots clés wisdom life peace silence loneliness sorrow expression thought brooding enlightenment faces face restlessness wandering loner wise-man pensive