Silence Quotes

It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgment to be silent.

Jean de La Bruyère

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

Latin proverb

Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.

James Russell Lowell

Be silent and safe - silence never betrays you.

John Boyle O'Reilly

He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction.

Bible

The rest is silence.

William Shakespeare

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.

William Shakespeare

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

Syrus

Silence is the unbearable repartee.

G.K. Chesterton

The cruellest lies are often told in silence.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Nature has given to men one tongue but two ears that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.

Epictetus

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

George Bernard Shaw

Speech may be barren but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.

George Eliot

Silence propagates itself and the longer talk has been suspended the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

Samuel Johnson

The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.

William Hazlitt

The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished not by doing something but by refraining from doing. Great is truth but still greater from a practical point of view is silence about truth.

Aldous Huxley

Men fear silence as they fear solitude because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.

André Maurois

Silence is deep as Eternity speech shallow as Time.

Thomas Carlyle

Better silent than stupid.

German Proverb

It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgement to be silent.

Jean de La Bruyère

I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.

Calvin Coolidge

One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears.

Dean Rusk

It is easier to talk than to hold one's tongue.

Greek Proverb

The pause - that impressive silence that eloquent silence that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words howsoever felicitous could accomplish it.

Mark Twain

Silence is more eloquent than words.

Thomas Carlyle

Speech is silver silence is golden.

German Proverb

Still waters run deep.

English Proverb

Vessels never give so great a sound as when they are empty.

Bishop John Jewell

How could the drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.

Antoine de St. Exupery

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture.

Aldous Huxley

The silent dog is the first to bite.

Old saying

We need a reason to speak but none to keep silent.

Pierre Nicole

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Thomas Hardy

I believe in the discipline of silence and could talk for hours about it.

George Bernard Shaw

He has the gift of quiet.

John le Carré

I'm exhausted from not talking.

Sam Goldwyn

Our biggest moments have happened in silence. In glances and embraces. As though our souls had found rest within each other. As though our hearts were memorizing the feelings and inscribing them in a language no one else could understand.

Liz Newman

There is no silence upon the earth or under the earth like the silence under the sea;No cries announcing birth,No sounds declaring death.There is silence when the milt is laid on the spawn in the weeds and fungus of the rock-clefts;And silence in the growth and struggle for life.The bonitoes pounce upon the mackerel,And are themselves caught by the barracudas,The sharks kill the barracudasAnd the great molluscs rend the sharks,And all noiselessly--Though swift be the action and final the conflict,The drama is silent.There is no fury upon the earth like the fury under the sea.For growl and cough and snarl are the tokens of spendthrifts who know not the ultimate economy of rage.Moreover, the pace of the blood is too fast.But under the waves the blood is sluggard and has the same temperature as that of the sea.There is something pre-reptilian about a silent kill.Two men may end their hostilities just with their battle-cries,'The devil take you,' says one.'I'll see you in hell,' says the other.And these introductory salutes followed by a hail of gutturals and sibilants are often the beginning of friendship, for who would not prefer to be lustily damned than to be half-heartedly blessed?No one need fear oaths that are properly enunciated, for they belong to the inheritance of just men made perfect, and, for all we know, of such may be the Kingdom of Heaven.But let silent hate be put away for it feeds upon the heart of the hater.Today I watched two pairs of eyes. One pair was black and the other grey. And while the owners thereof, for the space of five seconds, walked past each other, the grey snapped at the black and the black riddled the grey.One looked to say--'The cat,'And the other--'The cur.'But no words were spoken;Not so much as a hiss or a murmur came through the perfect enamel of the teeth; not so much as a gesture of enmity.If the right upper lip curled over the canine, it went unnoticed.The lashes veiled the eyes not for an instant in the passing.And as between the two in respect to candour of intention or eternity of wish, there was no choice, for the stare was mutual and absolute.A word would have dulled the exquisite edge of the feeling.An oath would have flawed the crystallization of the hate.For only such culture could grow in a climate of silence--Away back before emergence of fur or feather, back to the unvocal sea and down deep where the darkness spills its wash on the threshold of light, where the lids never close upon the eyes, where the inhabitants slay in silence and are as silently slain.

E. J. Pratt

Even in silence a heart can scream.

Matshona Dhliwayo

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

Margaret Atwood

The silence of a convent at night is the silence of the grave. Too far removed from the busy world without for external sounds to penetrate the thick walls, whilst within no slamming door, nor wandering foot, nor sacrilegious voice breaks in upon the stillness, the slightest noise strikes upon the ear with a fearful distinctness. ("The Monk's Story")

Catherine Crowe

Silence is peace, silence is quiet, silence is calming, silence is what you can be.

Jessica Kissner

You'll look away from your own face in the mirror, pull the chain twice to hide from yourself in the dark, and when it's all over you won't fucking say anything. You won't fucking say anything to anyone ever.

Tupelo Hassman

The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

Patrick Rothfuss

When a woman who has much to say says nothing, her silence can be deafening.

Margaret Landon

Thoughts will lead you in circles. Silence will bring you back to your centre.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

Because sometimes when someone is telling you something really important, it’s best to just let there be silence, to really think about what they’re saying. A lot of times people think they have to say something all insightful or wise or something to try and make the person feel better. But really, sometimes silence is best.

Lauren Barnholdt

Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one.

Rosemary Sutcliff

To be silent. In hopes of not offending, in hopes of being accepted. But what happened to people who never spoke, never raised their voices? Kept everything inside?Gamache knew what happened. Everything they swallowed, every word, thought, feeling rattled around inside, hollowing the person out. And into that chasm they stuffed their words, their rage.

Louise Penny

Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.

Robert Fripp

The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and leaves you without a single word of comfort.

Alice Hoffman

I've always thought it would be nice to have the house to myself for a while. This place gets so loud all theme and there are always so many people in it. But I guess I'm grateful for all the noise and chaos. I don't know if I want to be alone in the quiet with my thoughts these days.

Keary Taylor

Silence is not only golden, it is seldom misquoted.

Bob Monkhouse

She usually worked at night, claiming that the racket he made about the house distracted her during the day; she needed silence, total silence, in which to pursue her inspiration - else it fled away and left her with a splitting headache to show for it.

Helen Hodgman

They stared ahead. Silent. Morin had never realized murderers were caught in silence. But they were.

Louise Penny

We'll just sit here," said Barney, "and if we think of anything worth while saying we'll say it. Otherwise, not. Don't imagine you're bound to talk to me.""John Foster says," quoted Valancy, "'If you can sit in silencewith a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, youand that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'llnever be and you need not waste time in trying.'""Evidently John Foster says a sensible thing once in a while,"conceded Barney.

L.M. Montgomery

Meditation is the way to be with ourselves and to learn to accept our own aloneness. In aloneness, I experiment with being consciously alone as a door to be egoless. In conscious aloneness, the ego can not function. In aloneness, you are not. I have always been comfortable with my own aloneness as an inner source of love, joy, truth, silence and wholeness. When we depend on other people, it becomes a bondage - instead of a freedom. I took this sunday as a meditation to be consciously alone, and to accept all feelings of pain, of not being loved and the fear of being nobody that would come up during the meditation. This meditation goes up and down during the day: at certain moments, I can totally accept my aloneness. It feels fine to accept that I am alone and that I am nobody. At other moments, I feel the pain of not being loved, when the meditation brings up how dependence on other people is a barrier to totally accept my aloneness. I take a coffee at a restaurant. I am the only person that sits alone in the restaurant, while the other guests are couples and families eating sunday dinner. It brings up painful feelings of not being loved and wanting to be needed by other people, when I see how much people cling to each other in the couples and the families. Escaping your aloneness through relationships and needing other people's attention through being a teacher, a politician or by being rich or famous, are ways of escaping the pain of aloneness. But then the relationships are not really love. Only when you are capable of being alone, you can really love. When we can be alone, we discover the inner source of love, which is our true nature. When we can be alone, it open the door to be one with the Whole.

Swami Dhyan Giten

Harold had become, over the past week, a connoisseur of silences. He was an expert at differentiating the particulars; was this a Tranquil Silence, marked by slow sighs and peaceful smiles? Or was it a Tired Silence, marked by ornery chair shifting? Or a Tense Silence, full of tight breaths and cautious glances?

Graham Moore

Enlightenment is a paradoxical phenomenon. You need to be commited to become enlightenment, and to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. But at the same time you can not force enlightenment to happen by sheer will. It is like the situation with happiness: you can not force happiness to happen, but you can create the right circumstances for happiness tohappen. You need to be willing to die, to let go of your limited sense of “I”, to achieve enlightenment. I can feel a deepening thirst to die, to dissolve into the silence, in my heart and being.

Swami Dhyan Giten

When we become silent, we become whole. And when we become whole, we become holy.

Swami Dhyan Giten

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Silence Quotes

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