Frantisek Kupka, “The Way of Silence”

I.“…thou sweet spring for the thirsty in the desert; it is closed for those who speak there, it is open for those who keep silence there. When the silent man cometh, he findeth the spring.”

A Hymn to Thoth from the Sallier Papyrus, via Erman Adolf, Handbook of Egyptian Religion, p. 84

II.“When writing poetry one is always assisted and even carried away by the rhythm of all things outside, for the lyric cadence is that of nature: of the waters, the wind, the night. But in order to shape prose rhythmically, one has to immerse oneself deeply within oneself and detect the blood’s anonymous, multi-varied rhythm. Prose is to be built like a cathedral: there one is truly without name, without ambition, without help: up in the scaffolding, alone with one’s conscience.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters on Life,” New Prose Translations by Ulrich Baer (excerpts of Rilke’s letters arranged by theme), Kindle edition

III.”It was the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which shaped and crowned and consecrated every occupation, every hour of the day, every point of view in the town.

…

And in the evening, as I came in from my walk and thought of the approaching moment when I must say good night to my mother and see her no more, the steeple was by contrast so kindly, there at the close of day, that I would imagine it as being laid, like a brown velvet cushion, against—as being thrust into the pallid sky which had yielded beneath its pressure, had sunk slightly so as to make room for it, and had correspondingly risen on either side; while the cries of the birds wheeling to and fro about it seemed to intensify its silence, to elongate its spire still further, and to invest it with some quality beyond the power of words.”

Marcel Proust, “Swann’s Way,” translated by K. Scott Moncrieff, Kindle edition