quotations about silence
Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.
NORTON JUSTER
The Phantom Tollbooth
When two have met, and caught in sudden gleams
Life's full completeness measured each in each,
There is no silence evermore; what seems
So, verily is the very gold of speech.
CLARA MARCELLE FARRAR GREENE
"Silence"
What barrier is so insurmountable as silence?
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
Silence often enables us to see other people's imperfections, and helps us to conceal our own, but people with whom we associate might reasonably suspect us of emptiness if we indulge our inclination for silence on all occasions.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Silence and Concentration", Human Life from Many Angles
I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.
NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM
Hope Against Hope
To enjoy silence is a rare faculty. There are those who scarcely know what it means. They live in a world of reverberation. Even when they are alone their consciousness is noisy. If we had eyes fine enough to look in and to see what was going on we should find that they were always in a turmoil. They usually have a way of putting their idlest thoughts into words. To live with them may be a great trial. They trivialize life. They spread about them an atmosphere of fatigue. Their thinking is always on the surface, where they habitually live. The truth is that they have no time to do any real thinking. They never familiarize themselves with silence, where the real thinking is done, the thinking that goes down to the depths. As a rule, they cannot bear to be alone. No wonder. They have only the company of their strident thoughts clamoring to wear themselves out in words.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Silence", Reactions and Other Essays
Silence is the only weapon by which such victims can conquer; it baffles the Cossack charges of envy, the savage skirmishings of suspicion; it does at times give victory, crushing and complete--for what is more complete than silence? it is absolute; it is one of the attributes of infinity.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Pierrette
As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1738
To have command of silence is to secure a rich possession, like an independent estate. Happiest are those who can enjoy silence for long stretches. When they are mentally tired or depressed they can go into their silence and find refreshment. For days at a time they can be by themselves and rest. They can leave the turbulent city and escape into the country and abandon themselves to the wholesome influences of nature. They are not at the mercy of the need for companionship, the slaves of others. If we all knew how to be silent, deeply, wholesomely silent, we should have a panacea.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Silence", Reactions and Other Essays
Silence is the genius of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.
BERNARD DE BONNARD
attributed, Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
It's not the shouting
Or the angry words
It's not those looks
Sideways glancing
It's not do as I say
It's not compliance
It's the silence
It's the silence
COREY GLOVER
"Silence"
It's hard to put a foot in a shut mouth.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
"True Love"
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
Silence is the perfect expression of scorn.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Back to Methuselah
We talked together through that silence in the language of thought. Nothing is more rapturous than these mute conversations.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The best way to describe silence is to say nothing--but what grace!
GENE WOLFE
The Book of the New Sun
Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Tatler, February 14, 1709
Silence is not an apolitical action.... To remain silent is to remain complicit.
KELSEY MCKINNEY
"Blank Space: Taylor Will Not--and Should Not--Solve Your Donald Trump Anxiety", The Ringer, August 31, 2017