Quotes about silence

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads on like a gray vegetation.

— Jean Arp

From politics it was an easy step to silence.

— Jane Austen

Silence is the virtue of fools.

— Francis Bacon

An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.

— Walter Bagehot

It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.

— Francis Beaumont

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

— Samuel Beckett

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. [New Testament]

— Bible

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. [Proverbs 17:28]

— Bible

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

— Josh Billings

When thou art quiet and silent, then art thou as God was before nature and creature; thou art that which God then wats; thou art that whereof he made thy nature and creature: Then thou hearest and seest even with that wherewith God himself saw and heard in thee, before every thine own willing or thine own seeing began.

— Jacob Boehme

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.

— Leroy Brownlow

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

— Robert Burns

Silence is more eloquent than words.

— Thomas Carlyle

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves.

— Thomas Carlyle

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

— Thomas Carlyle

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

— Thomas Carlyle

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

— Thomas Carlyle

Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.

— Thomas Carlyle

I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.

— Cato The Elder

Silence is the unbearable repartee.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

— Deepak Chopra

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

— Winston Churchill

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

— Marcus T. Cicero

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.

— Charles Caleb Colton

Silence is the true friend that never betrays.

— Confucius

If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it.

— Calvin Coolidge

These be three silent things: The Falling snow... the hour before the dawn... the mouth of one just dead.

— Adelaide Crapsey

And now the silences come in a single lifetime, in a single year... when species die, leaving a silent space in the world song that can never be filled.

— Charles Delint

X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.

— R A Dickson

When little is done, little is said; silence is the mother of truth.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Silence is the mother of truth.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Not to ask is not be denied.

— John Dryden

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

— George Eliot

Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

— Silvan Engel

I am better able to retract what I did not say than what I did.

— Ibn Gabirol

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

— Charles De Gaulle

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.

— Kahlil Gibran

The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them known only to those who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations.

— Henry Giles

Silence is argument carried on by other means.

— Che Guevara

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

— Thomas Hardy

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

— Mark Helprin

Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.

— Johann Gottfried Von Herder

And Silence, like a poultice, comes to heal the blows of sound.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

The man who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

— Elbert Hubbard

It ain't a bad plan to keep still occasionally even when you know what you're talking about.

— Kin Hubbard

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.

— Aldous Huxley

It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they speak with the accent of natives they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds.

— Ivan Illich

It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others.

— St. John of the Cross

What she doesn't say is just as important as what she does say -- but there's so much more of it. I think from now on I'm going to stick to what she actually does say because I don't have that kind of time.

— Jonathan Katz

The unspoken word never does harm.

— Lajos Kossuth

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

— Abraham Lincoln

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

— Marcel Marceau

Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.

— Phyllis Mcginley

Sticks and stones are hard on bones aimed with angry art. Words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart.

— Phyllis Mcginley

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature -- trees, flowers, grass -- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls.

— Mother Teresa

The greatest admiration gives rise not to words, but to silence.

— Musonnius

If you keep your mouth shut you will never put your foot in it.

— Austin O'Malley

Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

— Ovid

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

— William Penn

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

— Plutarch

The silent dog is the first to bite.

— Proverb

Silence implies consent.

— Proverb

The whisper of a pretty girl can be heard further than the roar of a lion.

— Arabian Proverb

The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace.

— Arabian Proverb

Still waters run deep.

— English Proverb

A silent mouth is melodious.

— Irish Proverb

It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.

— Pythagoras

A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?

— Edward Hersey Richards

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

Silence is the perfectos herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.

— William Shakespeare

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

— George Bernard Shaw

Sometimes a whisper speaks volumes.

— Scott Sheddan

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.

— Dame Edith Sitwell

His enemies might have said before that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

— Sydney Smith

He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.

— Sydney Smith

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.

— Publilius Syrus

I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent.

— Publilius Syrus

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

— Henry David Thoreau

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

— Mark Twain

Those that are silent profess consent.

— Source Unknown

Consider the whale: It never gets into trouble until it comes up and starts spouting.

— Source Unknown

I don't know whether to keep silent and let people think I am ignorant or open my mouth and release all doubts.

— Source Unknown

I went down with the ship but I kept my mouth shut so I didn't drown like the rest of them.

— Source Unknown

Keep your mouth closed until your mind is in gear.

— Source Unknown

Silence is never more golden than when you hold it long enough to get all the facts before you speak.

— Source Unknown

Sometimes silence is not golden -- just yellow.

— Source Unknown

There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say -- unless you insist on saying it.

— Source Unknown

You are a slave to what you do say, a master of what you don't say.

— Source Unknown

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.

— Source Unknown

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

— Oscar Wilde

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

— Xenocrates of Chalcedon

Silence may be golden, but can you think of a better way to entertain someone than to listen to him?

— Brigham Young

Silence is the sanctuary of the prudent, it conceals not only secrets but also imperfections.

— Zacharia

It is easy to see the glow but hard to recognize the awakening of silence.

— Dejan Stojanovic

Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.

— Dejan Stojanovic

In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.

— Dejan Stojanovic

In an endless silence even screams sound silent.

— Dejan Stojanovic

A word into the silence thrown always finds its echo somewhere where silence opens hidden lexicons.

— Dejan Stojanovic