• The Quiet Girl (2022)

  • “There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all.

    There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent. And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have a meaning?

    There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed; when the man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken, and he learns a different wisdom: distinguishing the sun from the moon, the stars from the darkness, the sea from the dry land, and the night sky from the shoulder of a hill.”

    —Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

  • It is difficult to find a pious person who, at the same time, talks a lot. On the contrary, those who possess the spirit of prayer love silence.

    The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
    Cardinal Robert Sarah, Nicolas Diat

  • It says in Proverbs, “He who covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends.”(Proverbs 17:9) If I learn that my brother has sinned, and I accept him and cover his sin, then I am seeking love, but if I begin speaking about his sin, and continue talking about him, I separate people.

    “We should not snoop on people, and places, to discover others’ sins. If the sins of others were presented to us, being forced upon us, we should not examine them nor turn to them.”

    —Abba Pimen the Solitary—

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • This thought of yours is wicked; for it wants to prevent you from correcting your brother. Therefore, do not prevent yourself from speaking; but rather, speak according to God.

    For, indeed, even sick people that are being healed will speak against their doctors; yet, the latter do not care, knowing that the same people will thank them afterward.

    Letters from the Desert: A Selection of Questions and Responses (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press Popular Patristics Series)

  • Be convinced that if a man is interiorly fighting and is troubled by some impassioned thought and publishes it abroad, he gives it more strength against himself, giving it power to fight against him and trouble him more. But if he faces it squarely and contests it and stirs up contrary thoughts, as I often tell you, he weakens that passionate thought and it becomes unable to fight against him and trouble him. And fighting in this way, little by little, and with the help of God, he overcomes the passion itself.

    —Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses and Sayings

  • When he is silent, it is by wisdom. And when he talks, it is for a benefit.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Spiritual Man

  • Think of anybody that you know that almost never speaks and never gives their opinion. When that person speaks, usually everyone is listening because they’re like, “that person usually doesn’t talk.”

    Suddenly it’s like whoa whoa whoa, they’re speaking. “What are you saying?”

    –Fr. Antony Paul


  • “The more a man’s tongue flees talkativeness, the more his intellect is illumined so as to be able to discern deep thoughts.”

    —St. Isaac the Syrian

  • Look at the holy ones; most of them decreased their speech as they got older and grew and became wiser.

    —Fr. Antony Paul