“We speak only during the time when we do not live. . . . We use a great part of our life seeking the places where silence does not reign. As soon as two or three persons meet, they think only of banishing the invisible enemy . . . Recall the day when you met without fear your first silence. That was . . . on the return from a trip, on the threshold of a departure, in the course of a great joy, beside a corpse, or on the brink of a misfortune. . . . Tell me whether the caresses of the enemy were not then divine caresses?” [What do we know about a person who lives always occupied with external things?] “We cannot form an exact idea of one who has never kept silence. One would say that his soul has not had any sight. . . . Souls weigh themselves in silence.”
~Maurice Maeterlinck
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