Stillness Quotes from 108 Minutes of Restoration

Photo Credit: Julia Zimmerman

“Stillness, is not the absence of movement or sound. It’s not about focusing on nothingness; it’s about creating a physical and emotional clearing to allow ourselves to feel, think, dream and question.” ~ Brené Brown

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 “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” ~ William James

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 “In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.” ~ Pico Iyer

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“All artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness...” ~ Eckhart Tolle

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“As they sometimes say around Kyoto, ‘don’t just do something. Sit there.” ~ Pico Iyer

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“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” ~ Aldous Huxley 

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“After Admiral Richard E. Byrd spend nearly five months alone in a shack in the Antarctic, in temperatures that sank to 70 degrees below zero, he emerged convinced that ‘half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.” ~ Pico Iyer 

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“Silence makes the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts.” ~ Margaret Lee Runbeck

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“Never miss a good chance to shut up.” ~ Will Rogers

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“I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.” ~ Saul Bellow

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“It’s only by going nowhere—by sitting still or allowing my mind to relax—that I find that the thoughts that come to me unbidden are far fresher and more imaginative than the ones I consciously seek out.” ~ Pico Iyer

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“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

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“You have the answer. Just get quiet enough to hear it.” ~ Pat Obuchowski

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“Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.” ~ Rumi