Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference
Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not all it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
If we look at the world around us, we see that we are conditioned to not listen deeply. Because isn't that what silence is? It's a listening, a deep wordless listening.
Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness.
Coming at twenty to his father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation. His father, who had once been in a dependent position, and so was sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with distrust and sullenness.
Bring your mind to noble silence. Unify your mind in noble silence. Concentrate your mind in noble silence... Enter into rapture and pleasure born of silence derived of concentration and awareness that is free from thought and fabrication.
And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history.