60 Inspiring Quietness Quotes

In today's fast-paced world, finding moments of quiet can be a rare luxury. Yet, it is in these tranquil spaces that we often find clarity, peace, and inspiration. Whether it's the gentle hush of nature's embrace or the serene solitude of a quiet room, these moments allow us to connect with our inner thoughts and gain valuable perspective. Our curated collection of the top 60 inspiring quietness quotes invites you to explore the profound wisdom and solace that silence offers. Let these words guide you to embrace the beauty in stillness and find harmony in the gentle cadence of quiet reflection.

1. “There's an old adage," he said, "translated from the ancient Coptic, that contains all the wisdom of the ages -- "Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die.” - Beryl Markham

2. “Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. - Amir” - Khaled Hosseini

3. “The world is quiet here.” - Lemony Snicket

4. “That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.” - Ray Bradbury

5. “No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.” - Erich Maria Remarque

6. “It's quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people's dreams.” - Gayle Forman

7. “We love the night and its quiet; and there is no night that we love so well as that on which the moon is coffined in clouds.” - Fitz-James O'Brien

8. “There is nothing more harrowing than a deadly hush with the feel of a great noise around it” - Jessie Douglas Kerruish

9. “The unusual thing about quiet is that when you seek it, it is almost impossible to achieve. When you strive for quiet, you become impatient, and impatience is itself a noiseless noise. You can block every superficial sound, but, with each new layer extinguished, a next rises up, finer and more entrapping, until you arrive at last in the infinite attitude of your own riotous mind. Inside is where all the memories last like wells, and the unspoken wishes like golden buds, and the pain that you keep, lingering and implicit, staying inside, nesting inside, articulating, articulating, through to the day you die. (p. 240)” - Hilary Thayer Hamann

10. “Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.” - Norton Juster

11. “Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown...” - Robert Greene

12. “Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers.” - Ester Buchholz

13. “In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” - Rollo May

14. “It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again.This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.” - Christopher Hitchens

15. “Outside, there was that predawn kind of clarity, where the momentum of living has not quite captured the day. The air was not filled with conversation or thought bubbles or laughter or sidelong glances. Everyone was sleeping, all of their ideas and hopes and hidden agendas entangled in the dream world, leaving this world clear and crisp and cold as a bottle of milk in the fridge. ” - Reif Larsen

16. “I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself.” - H. Beam Piper

17. “But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?" You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.” - Anne Lamott

18. “My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.” - Patricia Highsmith

19. “summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. for those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. you can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. summer just opens the door and lets you out.” - Deb Caletti

20. “Quiet is here and all in me. ("Dress of White Silk")” - Richard Matheson

21. “Q: Why do I love thee, O Night?A: Because you know I will never answer.” - Vera Nazarian

22. “Sometimes it is the quiet observer who sees the most.” - Kathryn L. Nelson

23. “These were always the weirdest trips for me, when it was midnight or even later, and we pulled up to a dark house, trying to be quiet. Like a robbery in reverse, creeping around to leave something rather than take it.” - Sarah Dessen

24. “Solitude is the house of peace.” - T.F. Hodge

25. “Another of the hard things about being in a war, grandchildren, is that although there are times of quiet when the fighting has stopped, you know you will soon be fighting again. Those quiet times give you the chance to think about what has happened. Some of it you would rather not think about, as you remember the pain and the sorrow. You also have time to worry about what will happen when you go into battle again.” - Joseph Bruchac

26. “I am a minimalist. I like saying the most with the least.” - Bob Newhart

27. “It would be erroneous to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. Sohrab's silence wasn't the self imposed silence of those with convictions, of protesters who seek to speak their cause by not speaking at all. It was the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under.” - Khaled Hosseini

28. “I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.” - Sarah Dessen

29. “Just because you don't say much doesn't mean people don't notice you. It's actually the quiet ones who often draw the most attention. There's this constant whirlwind of motion and sound all around, and then there's the quiet one, the eye of the storm.” - Amy Efaw

30. “She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.” - Ann Brashares

31. “She knew that when she got old it would be more fun to look back on a life of romance and adventure than a life of quiet habits. But looking back was easy. It was the doing that was painful. There were plenty of things she would like to look back on but wasn't willing to risk ...” - Ann Brashares

32. “Perry was leaning into my mother as he listened to what she said. They talked so close. He only leaned closer, his hands on the table, his leg touching hers. "It's so risky," my mother said. "Why are you doing this?""Because I'm human being. Because we're all human beings."My mother closed her eyes and winced. Maybe her hearing aid was ringing and bothering her, but as I watched her turn down the volume, I wanted to tell her right then that she couldn't quiet all those outside voices forever.” - Margaret McMullan

33. “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

34. “The devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, crowds. He will not allow quietness.” - Elisabeth Elliot

35. “Build a House for men and birds.Sit with them and play music.For a day, for just one day,talk about that which disturbs no oneand bring some peace,my friend,into your beautiful eyes.” - Hafez

36. “Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, "The world is quiet here," as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.” - Lemony Snicket

37. “Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much", a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral.Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers.” - Susan Cain

38. “What had been quiet and restful was now silent and empty.” - Frederick Barthelme

39. “Children are natural practitioners of the Queer and the Questing, for childhood is nothing but a quest through a queer country. Of course, they often have a good deal of trouble with the Quiet.” - Catherynne M. Valente

40. “How intense can be the longing to escape from the emptiness and dullness of human verbosity, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labour, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!” - Boris Pasternak

41. “The only thing nicer than a phone that didn't ring all the time (or indeed at all) was six phones that didn't ring all the time (or indeed at all).” - Douglas Adams

42. “I thought it would be quieter here.” [Anna] hadn’t meant to say anything, but the noise startled her. “The wind in the trees,” Bran said. “And there are some birds that stay year-round. Sometimes when the wind is still and the cold is upon us, the quiet is so deep you can feel it in your bones.” - Patricia Briggs

43. “Count the number of times you have spoken. And really meant what you have said. Count the number of times you have chosen to keep quiet instead.” - jay woodman

44. “We didn't say or write anything for a long time. Normally silence like that was uncomfortable and awkward. Like you needed to say something to fill the empty space in the air. But it didn't feel like that with Samantha. Maybe it was because I couldn't say anything and fill the quiet, but I thought it was more about two people just being with each other, enjoying the slowdown and the rare sunshine.” - Keary Taylor

45. “I've always thought it would be nice to have the house to myself for a while. This place gets so loud all theme and there are always so many people in it. But I guess I'm grateful for all the noise and chaos. I don't know if I want to be alone in the quiet with my thoughts these days.” - Keary Taylor

46. “That’s how it felt – that the loss of him had a life of its own. I lived with it as I could have lived with him. Some nights it was quiet and sometimes it pounded on my door.” - Kimberly Novosel

47. “It is not fancy hair, gold jewelry, or fine clothes that should make you beautiful. No, your beauty should come from within you - the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. This beauty will never disappear, and it is worth very much to God. Peter 3:3-4” - Anonymous

48. “The world is too quiet without you nearby.” - Lemony Snickett

49. “These are the few ways we can practice humility:To speak as little as possible of one's self.To mind one's own business.Not to want to manage other people's affairs.To avoid curiosity.To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully.To pass over the mistakes of others.To accept insults and injuries.To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked.To be kind and gentle even under provocation.Never to stand on one's dignity.To choose always the hardest.” - Mother Teresa

50. “When it’s quiet in my head like this, that’s when the voice doesn’t need to tell me how pathetic I am. I know it in the deepest part of me. When it’s quiet like this, that’s when I truly hate myself.” - Portia De Rossi

51. “Some people speak a lot, but have very little to say. Some people speak very little, but have very much to say.” - Mark Hampton

52. “Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.” - Frank McCourt

53. “And in this quiet moment, as I close my eyes, spent and sated, I think I'm in the eye of the storm. And in spite of all he's said and what he hasn't said, I don't think I have ever been so happy.” - E.L. James

54. “Thoughts will lead you in circles. Silence will bring you back to your centre.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

55. “People dread silence because it is transparent; like clear water, which reveals every obstacle—the used, the dead, the drowned, silence reveals the cast-off words and thoughts dropped in to obscure its clear stream. And when people stare too close to silence they sometimes face their own reflections, their magnified shadows in the depths, and that frightens them. I know; I know.” - Janet Frame

56. “Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.” - E.M. Forster

57. “An even more pointed example of the the power of the silence tabu in libraries occurred in Duluth in 1981. The police were pursuing a fugitive from justice who ran into the public library. Uniformed police surrounded the building, and the library director was notified that only unobtrusive plainclothesmen were entering the building. Their instructions: “When you find him, overpower him. Quietly.” It was done, and only a few people in the crowded building saw a handcuffed man being ushered past the checkout counter. “See,” one librarian remarked quietly to an amazed person, “that’s what happens when you don’t pay your book fines.” - Ray B. Browne

58. “It's a sweet thing to sit quietly in the early-morning darkness and talk to God for a while. It's amazing what you gain from the conversation.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

59. “Silence can bring us into alignment with our thoughts and feelings and help us to hear the quiet spiritual voice of our intuition.” - Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

60. “I loved the quiet places in Kyoto, the places that held the world within a windless moment. Inside the temples, Nature held her breath. All longing was put to sleep in the stillness, and all was distilled into a clean simplicity.The smell of woodsmoke, the drift of incense; a procession of monks in black-and-gold robes, one of them giggling in a voice yet unbroken; a touch of autumn in the air, a sense of gathering rain.” - Pico Iyer