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)

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

We have to learn to discern two kinds of silence. Godʼs silence and our own inner silence. An encounter does not become deep and full until the two parties to it are capable of being silent with one another…When our silence is deep enough, we can begin to speak from its depths, but carefully and cautiously so as not to break it by the noisy disorder of our words. Then our thought is contemplative.

—Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Courage to Pray