A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn’t know.

We had so many of those meaningless banter phrases, those icebreakers… they were meaningless-but without malice of harm, and they helped awkward people get over their embarrassment at being alive.

…the presence of others has become even more intolerable to me, their conversation most of all. Oh, how it all annoys and exasperates me: their attitudes, their manners, their whole way of being! The people...

I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbours who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.

In the night, I am kept awake by the endless chatter of my inner self. I hear it speak softly of old hurts and fondly of past loves, while its demands and anxieties resound throughout...

Lovers of words have no place where honest work must be done.

If talk is cheap, then being silent is expensive. And many people it seems, can’t afford to buy into it.

In his field, and with his means, Rilke carries out an operation that one could philosophically describe as the ‘transformation of being into message’ (more commonly, ‘linguistic turn’). ‘Being that can be be understood is...

All talk and all chatter is the false self.

Your tongue tends to say more about you when it blabs about other people.

There is already enough chattering nonsense on the ground. Do we really need aviaries in pressurised tin cans at 30,000 feet as well ?

Mind chatter: a clatter of left-brain rains of doubt, worry, guilt, shame in a thunderstorm of fear. Forgive the chatter, clear your mind.

Every new dayOur children’s joy is as fresh as roses,Even the birds chatter at dawn.

It is the nature of physics to hear the loudest of mouths over the most comprehensive ones.

Satan will always provide a witness to where you have been, in order to challenge your fate.

This meal happened to be a make-believe tea, and they sat ’round the board guzzling in their greed; and really, what with their chatter and recriminations, the noise, as Wendy said, was postiviely deafening.

Anyone who has learned the Quran and holds it lovingly in his heart will ‘value his nights when people are asleep, his days when people are given to excess, his grief when people are joyful,...