One of the really great needs of our own day is silence. Modern life seems to thrive on a fondness for noise, and by noise I mean not only the staccato barbarism of jazz, or the bleating and moaning of saxophone orchestras, but also, and principally, the excessive desire for that which distracts — love of amusements, constant goings and comings, excitements and thrills, and movement for the mere sake of movement. What is the reason for this fondness of noise? It is not due to any inherent love of that which is loud, for people generally prefer that which is soft and refined. Rather the reason is to be found in the great desire on the part of human beings to do the impossible, namely to escape from themselves. They do not like to be with themselves because they are not pleased with themselves; they do not like to be alone with their conscience, because their conscience reproves and carries on an unbearable repartee. The do not like to be quiet, because the footsteps of the Hound of Heaven which can be heard in silence, cannot be heard in the din of excitement; they do not like to be silent, because God's voice is like a whisper and it cannot be heard in the tumult of the city streets. There are some of the reasons why the modern world loves noise, and that are all resolvable to this: noise drowns God's voice and stupefies conscience. Dull, indeed, are these distractions, but like the clay used by savages to dull the pain of hunger, they stifle in the soul the hunger for the presence of God. The result is that very few people ever know themselves. In fact, they know everyone else better than they know themselves. That is why so few ever see their own faults…

In order to remedy this condition, what is needed is less amusing and more musing; a silence; a going apart into the desert of our souls to rest a while; a solitariness from men and an aloneness with God; a quiet which permits the soul to be sensitive tp the whispers of God; a requiem or a rest from modern maxims and the excuses of new philosophies and the excitements which appeal to the body and disturb the soul; a privacy inspired by the example of Him who needed least of all mankind a preparation of silence for a life of activity, and yet had the greatest of them all; a tranquility inspired by Him who in the midst of a busy life spent whole nights on mountaintops in prayer.

Silence is the condition of entering into oneself, which is another way of saying, of finding God.

~~Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in Moods and Truths, found in Praying in the Presence of Our Lord with Fulton J. Sheen