- Silence is the speech of love,
- The music of the spheres above.
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD, Speech of Love
Silence about a thing just magnifies it.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Silence often has the strongest voice.
In silence you can't hide anything ... as you can in words.
AUGUST STRINDBERG, The Ghost Sonata
Silence is like a river of grace inviting us to leap unafraid into its beckoning depths. It is dark and mysterious in the waters of grace. Yet in the silent darkness we are given new eyes. In the heart of the divine we can see more clearly who we are. We are renewed and cleansed in this river of silence. There are those among you who fear the Great Silence. It is a foreign land to you. Sometimes it is good to leap into the unknown. Practice leaping.
MACRINA WIEDERKEHR, Seven Sacred Pauses
I have found out in the course of a long public life that the things I did not say never hurt me.
CALVIN COOLIDGE, The Man from Vermont
When the teeth are shut the tongue is at home.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, "The Touchstone," Fables
If we cannot teach beasts to speak, we can at least learn silence from them.
Silence is the virtue of fools.
FRANCIS BACON, De Augmentis Scientiarum
Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, Virginibus Puerisque
When people refuse to speak out for too long, it's like water that's stagnant and starts to rot!
AUGUST STRINDBERG, The Ghost Sonata
- Still-born Silence! thou that art
- Floodgate of the deeper heart.
RICHARD FLECKNOE, Poems
Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.
SAMUEL BECKETT, The Unnamable
When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning.
ECKHART TOLLE, Stillness Speaks
If silence is good for the wise, how much better is it for the foolish!
It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.
NICHOLAS SPARKS, The Notebook
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact--from calling on us to look through a heap of millet-seed in order to be sure that there is no pearl in it.
GEORGE ELIOT, Theophrastus Such
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.
MOTHER TERESA, A Gift for God
- Great hearts are free of either want or wish;
- They may be proud and richly clothe themselves
- In lofty, burdenless, mysterious Silence.
CARMEN SYLVA, "Out of the Deep"
Silence never betrays you.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY, "Rules of the Road"
Silence on the radio... I don't know how that works.
GARRISON KEILLOR, A Prairie Home Companion, 2006
Many a fine sermon doth Nature preach on the ever-new, forever-transgressed text of silence. It is not the roaring thunder that smites, but the silent lightning; and gravity, which bindeth worlds together and keepeth them from falling asunder, is ever silent. Prettily, too, doth the silent snow cover the ground, and make it like unto a table spread for a feast: unlike the noisy rain, which, after making a goodly number of puddles, quickly runneth off.
Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.
If you keep your mouth shut you will never put your foot in it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
Silence is one great art of conversation.
WILLIAM HAZLITT, Characteristics
To be silent oft is to learn.
He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER, Aphorisms on Man
|