“The other and no less important side consists in the fact that it is very difficult for a man to keep silent about things that interest him. He would like to speak about them to everyone with whom he is accustomed to share his thoughts, as he calls it. This is the most mechanical of all desires and in this case SILENCE is the most difficult abstinence of all. But if a man understands this or, at least, if he follows this rule, it will constitute for him the best exercise possible for self-remembering and for the development of will. Only a man who can be silent when it is necessary can be master of himself. Fragments: Eleven

And suddenly I remembered that I wanted above all to know what G. thought about “eternal recurrence,” about the repetition of lives, as I understood it. I had many times tried to start a conversation about this and to tell G. my views. But these conversations had always remained almost monologues. G. had listened in SILENCE and then begun to talk of something else. Fragments: Twelve

His small apartment on the Bolshaia Dmitrovka, all the floors and walls of which were covered in the Eastern style with carpets and the ceilings hung with silk shawls, astonished me by its special atmosphere. First of all the people who came there — who were all G.’s pupils — were not afraid to keep silent. This alone was something unusual. They came, sat down, smoked, they often did not speak a single word for hours. And there was nothing oppressive or unpleasant in this SILENCE; on the con-trary, there was a feeling of assurance and of freedom from the necessity of playing a forced and invented role. But on chance and curious visitors this SILENCE produced an extraordinarily strange impression. They began to talk and they talked without stopping as if they were afraid of stopping and feeling something. On the other hand others were offended, they thought that the “SILENCE” was directed against them in order to show them how much superior G.’s pupils were and to make them understand that it was not worth while even talking to them; others found it stupid, amusing, “unnatural,” and that it showed our worst features, particularly our weakness and our complete subordination to G. who was “oppressing us.” Fragments: Thirteen

P. even decided to make notes of the reactions of various types of people to the “SILENCE.” I realized in this place that people feared SILENCE more than anything else, that our tendency to talk arises from self-defense and is always based upon a reluctance to see something, a reluctance to confess something to oneself. Fragments: Thirteen

I quickly noticed a still stranger property of G.’s apartment. It was not possible to tell lies there. A lie at once became apparent, obvious, tangible, indubitable. Once there came an acquaintance of G.’s whom I had met before and who sometimes came to G.’s groups. Besides myself there were two or three people in the apartment. G. himself was not there. And having sat a while in SILENCE our guest began to tell how he had just met a man who had told him some extraordinarily interesting things about the war, about possibilities of peace and so on. And suddenly quite unexpectedly for me I felt that he was lying. He had not met anybody and nobody had told him anything. He was making it all up on the spot simply because he could not endure the SILENCE. Fragments: Thirteen

G. summoned about fifteen of his people and arranged a lunch which, at that time, was luxurious, with zakuski, pies, shashlik, Khaghetia wine, and so on, in a word it was one of those Caucasian lunches that begin at midday and last until the evening. — He seated A. near him, was very kind to him, entertained him all the time, and poured out wine for him. My heart suddenly fell when I realized to what a test I had brought my old friend. The fact was that everyone kept SILENCE. A. held out for five minutes. Then he began to talk. He spoke of the war, of all our allies and enemies together and separately; he communicated the opinions of all the public men of Moscow and St. Petersburg upon all possible subjects; then he talked about the desiccation of vegetables for the army (with which he was then occupied in addition to his journalistic work), particularly the desiccation of onions, then about artificial manures, agricultural chemistry, and chemistry in general; about “melioration”; about spiritism, the “materialization of hands,” and about what else I do not remember now. Neither G. nor anyone else spoke a single word. I was on the point of speaking fearing that A. would be offended, but G. looked at me so fiercely that I stopped short. Besides, my fears were in vain. Poor A. noticed nothing, he was so carried away by his own talk and his own eloquence that he sat on happily at the table and talked without stopping for a moment until four o’clock. Then with great feeling he shook hands with G. and thanked him for his “very interesting conversation.” G., looking at me, laughed slyly. Fragments: Thirteen

He was silent and then continued: “Yes, in Russia at present there is a great deal of business out of which a clever man could make a lot of money.” And after another SILENCE he explained: “After all it is the war. Everyone wants to be a millionaire.” Fragments: Sixteen

But I personally was particularly interested in observing the place that talk occupied in life. In my opinion our first fast consisted in everybody talking without stopping for several days about the fast, that is, everybody spoke about himself. In this respect I remember very early talks with a Moscow friend about the fact that voluntary SILENCE could be the most severe discipline to which a man could subject himself. But at that time we meant absolute SILENCE. Even into this G. brought that wonderfully practical element which distinguished his system and his methods from anything I had known previously. Fragments: Seventeen

“Complete SILENCE is easier,” he said, when I began once to tell him my ideas. “Complete SILENCE is simply a way out of life. A man should be in the desert or in a monastery. We speak of work in life. And a man can keep SILENCE in such a way that no one will even notice it. The whole point is that we say a good deal too much. If we limited ourselves to what is actually necessary, this alone would be keeping SILENCE. And it is the same with everything else, with food, with pleasures, with sleep; with everything there is a limit to what is necessary. After this ‘sin’ begins. This is something that must be grasped, a ‘sin’ is something which is not necessary.” Fragments: Seventeen