Max Picard famous quotes

Nothing has changed the nature of man so much as the loss of silence,
-- Max Picard

#Loss #Men #Silence

Noise is manufactured in the city, just as goods are manufactured. The city is the place where noise is kept in stock, completely detached from the object from which it came.
-- Max Picard

#Cities #Noise #World

Meditation is a mental discipline that enables us to do one thing at a time.
-- Max Picard

#Discipline #Meditation

Many things that human words have upset are set at rest again by the silence of animals. Animals move through the world like a caravan of silence. A whole world, that of nature and that of animals, is filled with silence. Nature and animals seem like protuberances of silence. The silence of animals and the silence of nature would not be so great and noble if it were merely a failure of language to materialize. Silence has been entrusted to the animals and to nature as something created for its own sake.
-- Max Picard

#Moving #Animal #Silence

Music is silence, which in dreaming begins to sound
-- Max Picard

#Dream #Silence #Sound

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery. Not only Planck but also other physicists were intially at a loss as to what the proper context of the new postulate really was.

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.

A single blow must destroy the enemy... without regard of losses... a gigantic all-destroying blow.

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, `Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.' But I was one-and-twenty No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, `The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue.' And I am two-and-twenty And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

Quiet descended, a silence so consuming that even the drafty corridors ceased whistling. Bog wasn't certain where to look, so he solved the problem by plucking out his eyes and sticking them in a drawer.

When something important is going on, silence is a lie.

Hello Rush," she said, breaking the silence. The sound of her voice almost sent me to my knees. God, I'd missed her voice. "Blaire," I managed to say, terrified that I'd scare her away just by speaking.

I am in total silence when I write - I don't even like the sound of the dryer going - I like the quiet.

In the end it’s all very simple. Either we give ourselves to Silence or we don’t.