Many things that human words have upset are set at rest again by the silence of animals. Animals move through the world like a caravan of silence. A whole world, that of nature and that of animals, is filled with silence. Nature and animals seem like protuberances of silence. The silence of animals and the silence of nature would not be so great and noble if it were merely a failure of language to materialize. Silence has been entrusted to the animals and to nature as something created for its own sake.
Max Picard (5 June 1888 in Schopfheim, Baden, Germany – 3 October 1965 in Sorengo, Switzerland) was a Swiss writer and philosopher, important as one of the few thinkers writing from a deeply Platonic sensibility in the 20th century.