Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself
All of our great contemplative traditions advocate the necessity for silence in an individual life: first, for gaining a sense of discernment amid the noise and haste, second, as a basic building block of individual happiness, and third, to let this other all-seeing identity come to life and find its voice inside us.
David Whyte • The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship
Solitude can be a profound teacher. It can teach us how to hold ourselves—how to affirm ourselves and listen. How much is the sound of your own voice worth?
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
Only silence enables us to say something unheard of. The compulsion of communication, by contrast, leads to the reproduction of the same, to conformism:
So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop