A Quote by Anthony de Mello

Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self. — © Anthony de Mello
Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.
Darkness is the absence of light. Happiness is the absence of pain. Anger is the absence of joy. Jealousy is the absence of confidence. Love is the absence of doubt. Hate is the absence of peace. Fear is the absence of faith. Life is the absence of death.
Silence has a myriad of meanings. In the theater, silence is an absence of words, but never an absence of meaning.
In architecture, space was a material to be shaped, even created. For these men, the material was silence. Silence like water in which you could drown, the absence of talk as constricting as the absence of air.
Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.
Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.
I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
The mass gross absence of sound in space is more than just silence.
Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the absence of self.
Silence is not an absence of sound but rather a shifting of attention toward sounds that speak to the soul.
Father’s silence is not merely the absence of sound. It’s a creature with a life of its own. It chokes you. It pinches you small as a grain of rice. It twists in your gut like a worm. Silence clawed at my throat. It left a taste of burnt matches.
Silence must be comprehended as not solely the absence of sound. It is the natural environment for serenity and contemplation. Life without silence is life without privacy. The difference between sanity and madness is the quality of our thoughts. Silence is on the side of sanity.
In religious matters it is now fashionable to define tolerance as the absence of criticism of any standard religion. All too often, this absence of criticism degenerates into a conspicuous absence of thought.
Silence is not the absence of sound. It's a physical place, a destination with value and meaning in a chaotic world, somewhere arrived at with difficulty and left with regret.
That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal-unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space.
There is no such thing as experience here. You seem to know, you imagine. Imagination must come to an end...I don't know how to put it. The absence of imagination, the absence of will, the absence of effort, the absence of all movement in any direction, on any level, in any dimension - THAT is the thing. That is a thing that cannot be experienced at all. It is not an experience.
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