A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Henry David Thoreau

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About Begins Human Intercourse Misunderstanding Silence Silence Is Tragedy Understood Words

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Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

When white supremacy becomes institutional, it begins to harm the very people who are not simply outside of it because of their race, it begins to harm the folk who look like the folk who want to be in charge. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this, Malcolm X understood this, James Baldwin really understood this.

Michael Eric Dyson

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

Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.

Thomas Merton

The words 'alone,' 'lonely,' and 'loneliness' are three of the most powerful words in the English language. Those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.

Donald Miller

If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative.

Betty Eadie

It is impossible - now, at this point in the long journey of human culture - to avoid the sense that pain is necessity; that it is neither accident, nor malformation, nor malice, nor misunderstanding, that it is integral to the human character both in its inflicting and in its suffering, this terrible sense Tragedy alone has articulated, and will continue to articulate, and in so doing, make beautiful...

Howard Barker

If we understood the power of our thoughts, we would guard them more closely. If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative. In our thoughts and words we create our own weaknesses and our own strengths. Our limitations and joys begin in our hearts. We can always replace negative with positive.

Betty Eadie

History will have to recordThat the greatest tragedy of this period of social transitionWas not the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad peopleBut the appalling silence and indifference of the good.Our generation will have to repent notOnly for the words and actions of the children of darknessBut also for the fears and apathy of thechildren of light.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

There's been an awful lot of silence in make culture about this ongoing tragedy of men's violence against women and children... we need to break that silence, and we need more men to do that.

Jackson Katz

The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.

William Butler Yeats

In the beginning, I want to say something about human greatness. Some time ago, I was reading texts of Kungtse. When I read these texts, I understood something about human greatness. What I understood from his writings was: What is greatest in human beings is what makes them equal to everybody else. Everything else that deviates higher or lower from what is common to all human beings makes us less. If we know this, we can develop a deep respect for every human being.

Bert Hellinger

The impulse to create begins - often terribly and fearfully - in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?

Adrienne Rich

For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.

Thomas Merton

We usually recognize a beginning. Endings are more difficult to detect. Most often, they are realized only after reflection. Silence. We are seldom conscious when silence begins—it is only afterward that we realize what we have been a part of. In the night journeys of Canada geese, it is the silence that propels them. Thomas Merton writes, “Silence is the strength of our interior life.… If we fill our lives with silence, then we will live in hope.

Terry Tempest Williams

Billy Martin was a human tragedy, in the real sense of the words.

Reggie Jackson

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and of the concepts of liberty, freedom, and self-determination. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. He (Obama) believes that the pie is fixed and that he needs to more equitably divide up the slices.

Paul Ryan

A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

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