In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.

MRS. ALLONBY. It is only fair to tell you beforehand he has got no conversation at all. LADY STUTFIELD. I adore silent men. MRS ALLONBY. Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know. I haven't listened to him for years.

If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbroker's do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

Did you hear what I was playing, Lane? I didn't think it polite to listen, sir.

As I look back now I wonder how I was ever able to sell anything. I lost years of my life in scrapping and arguing. I keep my mouth shut now. It pays.

Make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up from the pages of books and from your own heart. Be still and listen to the voices that belong to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields. There are songs and sayings that belong to this place, by which it speaks for itself and no other.

Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.

Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words

the listening part is afraid that there may not be time to say it. Dewey Dell - As I Lay Dying.

Now that his physical voice was silent, the inner voice of reason, and other voices too, made themselves heard.

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.