The night was still. I could hear his breath coming easily beside me. Occasionally there was a sudden breeze that hit my bare legs, but it was all that remained of a promised windy night. This was the stillness before a thunderstorm. – Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28. Here an atmosphere of anticipation and foreboding is created, the calm before the storm, foreshadowing that something tumultuous was indeed about to happen.
The sound of ‘gentle stillness’ after all the thunder and wind have passed will the ultimate Word from God. – Jim Elliot
If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included. – A. R. Ammons
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
When something is moving you get that intake of breath and that stillness from the audience. – Theodore Bikel