Silence Quotes

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

Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant.

We should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence, but imagining the sound.

Give me a mystery - just a plain and simple one - a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery - just one!

There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth.

True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.

The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.

I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods.

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

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

When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself.

Silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say"” to them silence is simple and easy.

From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness.

A man is known by the silence he keeps.

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

ELECTED Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.

One must not be afraid of a little silence. Some find silence awkward or oppressive. But a relaxed approach to dialogue will include the welcoming of some silence. It is often a devastating question to ask oneself, but it is sometimes important to ask it - 'In saying what I have in mind will I really improve on the silence?

We hear nothing so clearly as what comes out of silence.

Everyone needs a place where they can go to just ponder for a while. Silence is important; it's the only time you can hear the whispering of truth.

The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is.

The tongue may be an unruly member— But silence poisons the soul.

Silence is the only language god speaks.

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.

The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing "” or one person "” at a time.

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.

Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.

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

Some stones are so heavy only silence helps you carry them!

As I get older I see that running has changed for me. What used to be about burning calories is now more about burning up what is false. Lies I used to tell myself about who I was and what I could do, friendships that cannot withstand hills or miles, the approval I no longer need to seek, and solidarity that cannot bear silence. I run to burn up what I don't need and ignite what I do.

Let us resolve: First, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault finding that does no good a sin; third, to practice the grade and virtue of praise.

The dead are silent because they live, just as we chatter so loudly to try to make ourselves forget that we are dying. Their silence is really their call to me, the assurance of their immortal love for me.

A woman once described a friend of hers as being such a keen listener that even the trees leaned toward her, as if they were speaking their innermost secrets into her listening ears. Over the years I’ve envisioned that woman’s silence, a hearing full and open enough that the world told her its stories. The green leaves turned toward her, whispering tales of soft breezes and the murmurs of leaf against leaf.

It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.

All the great pleasures of life are silent.

It's good to shut up sometimes.

Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.

I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished

Tears are the silent language of grief.

There was good reason for the silence of the Holy Spirit as to how,when, in what form Christ ordained the apostles, the reason being to show the indifferency of all forms of words

Silence is better than unmeaning words.

Writing is like praying, because you stop all other activities, descend into silence, and listen patiently to the depths of your soul, waiting for true words to come. When they do, you thank God because you know the words are a gift, and you write them down as honestly and cleanly as you can.

I saw old autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence.

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

The proverb says that 'The answer to a fool is silence'. Observation, however, indicates that almost any other answer will have the same effect in the long run.

We try to abolish intervals by our manic insistence on keeping busy, on doing something. And as a result, all we succeed in doing is destroying all hope of tranquility. ... . You have to learn to immerse yourself in the silences between.

Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.

Ask a wise man to dinner and he'll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you'll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people's entertainment.

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.

Silence is true wisdom's best reply.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude / And flew to the silence of sweet solitude.

You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

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

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

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

Silence is more eloquent than words.

Silence is no certain token that no secret grief is there; Sorrow which is never spoken is the heaviest load to bear.

Silence is not only golden, it is seldom misquoted.

A hush is over everything, Silent as women wait for love; The world is waiting for the spring.

I love the silent hour of night, for blissful dreams may then arise, revealing to my charmed sight what may not bless my waking eyes.

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.

All persons who are enthusiastic that they should transcend the other animals ought to strive with the utmost effort not to pass through a life of silence, like cattle, which nature has fashioned to be prone and obedient to their stomachs.

Silence is letting what there is be what it is. In that sense it has to do profoundly with God: the silence of simply being. We experience that at times when there is nothing we can say or do that would not intrude on the integrity and the beauty of that being.

I can always tell when you're reading somewhere in the house,' my mother used to say. 'There's a special silence, a reading silence.

Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.

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

The sequoias belong to the silences of the milleniums. Many of them have seen a hundred human generations rise, give off their little clamors and perish. They seem indeed to be forms of immortality standing here amoing the transitory shapes of time.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

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

Step by step, we will break this cycle of silence, poor information and stigma.

The very act of story-telling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of the narrative, is by definition holy. We tell stories because we can't help it. We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify. We tell stories because they fill the silence death imposes. We tell stories because they save us.

There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe.

It is true that all of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors, and it is true that nothing can be done about that now because the victims are dead and the survivors are innocent. These are good reasons for keeping our mouths shut about the past: but tell me, what are our reasons for silence about atrocities still to come?

Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying.

There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end and there is a silence in the middle.

In all the silent manliness of grief.

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.

The more you know the less you need to say.

Speech is the small change of silence.

The unspoken word never does harm.

When the owl sings, the night is silent. (Quand le hibou chante, La nuit est silence)

Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed.

I have a need of silence and of stars. Too much is said too loudly. I am dazed. The silken sound of whirled infinity Is lost in voices shouting to be heard…

With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand.

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.

Fieldes have eies and woods have eares.

Silence is the sure sign that you're on your way out in Hollywood.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

However, the serious seeker of detachment will have to embrace the Holy Trinity of Ss - Solitude, Stillness and Silence - and reject the new religion of Commotionism, which believes that the meaning of life is constant company, movement and noise.

Bigotry and intolerance, silenced by argument, endeavors to silence by persecution, in old days by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue.

All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

But let us laugh carelessly like other men. Let us be timid even among fools. Let us knot silence around our throats. For they would surely kill us.

We should silence anyone who opposes the right to freedom of speech.

Put a bridle on thy tongue; set a guard before thy lips, lest the words of thine own mouth destroy thy peace... on much speaking cometh repentance, but in silence is safety.

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.

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

When something that honest is said it usually needs a few minutes of silence to dissipate.

In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people.

To see the earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night ~ brothers who see now they are truly brothers.

Silence is become his mother tongue.

To listen to your own silence is the key to comedy.

Odd how much it hurts when a friend moves away- and leaves behind only silence.

Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence.

A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence, which costs us nothing.

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.

It's very important in life to know when to shut up. You should not be afraid of silence.

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

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.

Silence is the unbearable repartee.

I got quite bored, serving in the bar. Since I was there, the customers wouldn't talk about women, and with half their subject matter denied them, it was: horses, silence; horses, silence.

Be silent and safe-silence never betrays you.

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

It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues.

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

If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.

These be Three silent things: The Falling snow. . . the hour Before the dawn. . . the mouth of one Just dead.

If you cannot improve upon the silence, do not speak.

You can never get silence anywhere nowadays, have you noticed?

There is an art in silence, and there is an eloquence in it too.

Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.

Silence is sometimes the severest criticism.

A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side.

When the man who knows all about the fruit fly chromosomes finds himself sitting next to an authority on Beowulf, there may be an uneasy silence.

It is the mysterious that I love in painting. It is the stillness and the silence. I want my pictures to take effect very slowly, to obsess and to haunt.

You've been listening to the adagio from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. I think Ludwig pretty much summed up death in this one. You know, he had lost just about all his hearing when he wrote it, and I've often wondered if that didn't help him tune into the final silence of the great beyond.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

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

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

Some persons talk simply because they think sound is more manageable than silence.

Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.

Their silence is enough praise.

But, I don't know, the violence, I can't even talk about. We don't do a lot of violent shows. When I started in television, breaking a pencil was a violent act.

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.

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.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

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

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.

Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.

Talk uses up ideas. Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in the rich soil of silence do they grow.

In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.

Silence is an ornament which is visible from inside. (Le silence est une parure - Qui se voit de l'intérieur)

A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.

All noise is waste. So cultivate quietness in your speech, in your thoughts, in your emotions. Speak habitually low. Wait for attention and then you low words will be charged with dynamite.

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

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

The Democratic Party silence on Iraq is another moment of a voice lost. Faced with votes in favor of the war, the silence is deafening in Washington and the frustration is growing larger among voters. It's time for us to ask the question: What is the exit strategy?

Silence is one great art of conversation.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

I have often regretted having spoken, never having kept silent

Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval.

The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says, but rather to what he does not say.

What manly eloquence could produce such an effect as woman's silence?

Silence gives the proper grace to women

Wildness and silence disappeared from the countryside, sweetness fell from the air, not because anyone wished them to vanish or fall but because throughways had to floor the meadows with cement to carry the automobiles which advancing technology produced. Tropical beaches turned into high-priced slums where thousand-room hotels elbowed each other for glimpses of once-famous surf not because those who loved the beaches wanted them there but because enormous jets could bring a million tourists every year - and therefore did.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

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

The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

In fact nothing is said that has not been said before.

That silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by Cicero himself, who says, there is not only an art, but even an eloquence in it