quietude

• “This street was not so crowded as K, and I walked along in quietude, catching my breath and congratulating myself upon my hat and my get-away.”

  Road-Kids and Gay-Cats

• “The experience has made me crave silence rather than avoid it, because it’s only in quietude that you can think, really think, and whilst it wouldn’t suit everybody, profound contemplation has certainly given me the richest hours I’ve known.”

  On Silence « Tales from the Reading Room

• “There is one thing more which goes a long way towards the continued health of these English ladies, and therefore towards their beauty; and that is, the quietude and perpetuity of their domestic institutions.”

  Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2

• “His manners possess all that unostentatious frankness, and self-possessed urbanity and quietude, that is indicative of refined feelings.”

  Memoirs of 30 Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers

• “He could not account for it, but some of the Romanies, he remarks, “to whom I have stated this circumstance have accounted for it on the supposition that the soul which at present animates my body has at some former period tenanted that of one of their people, for many among them are believers in metempsychosis and, like the followers of Bouddha, imagine that their souls by passing through an infinite number of bodies, attain at length sufficient purity to be admitted to a state of perfect rest and quietude, which is the only idea of heaven they can form.””

  George Borrow in East Anglia

• “Terms such as quietude, emptiness, and simplicity favored by the Laozi describe a general ethical orientation rather than specific practices.”

  Laozi

• “You come from an island, Sir, which has endured more than its share of strife and suffering and whose history has witnessed the ebb and flow of your national fortunes in pursuit of that quietude which is characteristic of so many parts of your lovely country, and which must have inspired William Butler Yeats in his reverie on "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" to hope:”

  Emerald Isle in a Sea of Discord

• “They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion.”

  The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 46, August, 1861

• “In the state of "quietude" the mind is wholly inactive; it no longer thinks or wills on its own account, but remains passive while God acts within it.”

  The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12: Philip II-Reuss

• “There is a sort of fascination in it, lulling and soothing the mind into a quietude which is even pleasanter than sleep, and making it almost possible to do that of which we so often speak, but which we never quite accomplish -- "think about nothing.”

  Little Rivers; a book of essays in profitable idleness

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