“Interior silence is the end of judgments, passions, and desires. Once we have acquired interior silence, we can transport it within us into the world and pray everywhere. But just as interior asceticism cannot be obtained without concrete mortifications, it is absurd to speak about interior silence without exterior silence.

“Within silence there is a demand made on each one of us. Man controls his hours of activity if he knows how to enter into silence. The life of silence must be able to precede the active life.”

Robert Cardinal Sarah, The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), page 32