Cioran on silence

Withdraw into yourself, perceive there a silence as old as being, even older….

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The dissolving power of conversation. One realizes why both meditation and action require silence.

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Everything that lives makes noise. What an argument for the mineral kingdom!

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No accident that the Trappist order was founded in France rather than in Italy or Spain. Granted the Spanish and the Italians talk ceaselessly, but they do not hear themselves talk, whereas the Frenchman relishes his eloquence, never forgets he is talking, is consummately conscious of the fact He alone could regard silence as an ordeal, as an askesis.

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A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

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After having palavered for hours, I am invaded by the void. By the void and by shame. Is it not indecent to display one’s secrets, to proffer one’s very being, to tell and to tell oneself, whereas the fullest moments of one’s life have been known in silence, in the perception of silence?