Silence is Golden
I am sharing the following quotes with readers of this blog, because I was highly amused and at the same time entertained by them. I hope you will enjoy reading them as well.
Silence is a text easy to misread.
A. A. Attanasio, 'The Eagle and the Sword'
'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), (attributed)
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)
He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak.
Ausonius
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.
Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
Oppression can only survive through silence.
Carmen de Monteflores
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 (234 BC - 149 BC)
Silence is more musical than any song.
Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)
A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.
Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321), The Divine Comedy
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964)
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Back to Methuselah (1921) pt. 5
With silence favor me.
(Favete Linguis)
Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)
A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill, requires only our silence, which costs nothing.
John Tillotson (1630 - 1694)
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
Josh Billings (1818 - 1885)
The most profound statements are often said in silence.
Lynn Johnston (1947 - ), For Better or For Worse, 01-15-04
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.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)
Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
Martin Fraquhar Tupper
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)
In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.
Meister Eckhart
Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.
Muhammad Ali (1942 - ), "More Than a Hero"
Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.
Peter Minard
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims
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 (582 BC - 507 BC)
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)
Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant.
Saadi (1184 - 1291)
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)
It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.
Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)
Silence is the virtue of fools.
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
There are grammatical errors even in his silence.
Stanislaw J. Lec (1909 - 1966), "Unkempt Thoughts"
Words are a heavy thing...they weigh you down. If birds talked, they couldn't fly.
Sy Rosen and Christian Williams, Northern Exposure, On Your Own, 1992
He had occasional flashes of silence, that made his conversation perfectly delightful.
Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845), referring to Macaulay
Their silence is sufficient praise.
Terence (185 BC - 159 BC)
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 (1795 - 1881)
A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
Thomas Hardy
Of those who say nothing, few are silent.
Thomas Neill
Silence is one of the great arts of conversation, as allowed by Cicero himself, who says, 'there is not only an art, but an eloquence in it.' A well bred woman may easily and effectually promote the most useful and elegant conversation without speaking a word. The modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.
Tom Blair
There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
William Penn (1644 - 1718)
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Much Ado about Nothing", Act 2 scene 1
The rest is silence.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Hamlet", Act 5 scene 2