Motivational Quotes

Silence

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads on like a gray vegetation.

- Arp, Jean

Best Quotes about Silence

Their silence is sufficient praise.

Terence

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

Eliot, George

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

Samuel Johnson

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

Carlyle, Thomas

If you keep your mouth shut you will never put your foot in it.

O'Malley, Austin

Sticks and stones are hard on bones aimed with angry art. Words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart.

Mcginley, Phyllis

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. [New Testament]

Bible

I don't know whether to keep silent and let people think I am ignorant or open my mouth and release all doubts.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

10.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.

Blaise Pascal

11.

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

12.

The rest is silence.

William Shakespeare

13.

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

14.

Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

Thoreau, Henry David

16.

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

Young, Brigham

17.

There are grammatical errors even in his silence.

Stanislaw J. Lec

18.

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

Beckett, Samuel

19.

It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

Engel, Silvan

20.

Silence is the perfectos herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.

Shakespeare, William

21.

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

Smith, Sydney

22.

The man who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

Hubbard, Elbert

23.

Words are a heavy thing...they weigh you down. If birds talked, they couldn't fly.

Sy Rosen and Christian Williams

24.

He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak.

Ausonius

25.

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

Meister Eckhart

26.

'Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

Ovid

27.

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

Bagehot, Walter

28.

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

William Penn

29.

Arp, Jean

30.

Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.

Muhammad Ali

31.

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.

Brownlow, Leroy

32.

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

33.

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

Thoreau, Henry David

34.

Silence is more musical than any song.

Christina Rossetti

35.

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

Lynn Johnston

36.

Silence is the sanctuary of the prudent, it conceals not only secrets but also imperfections.

Zacharia

37.

An now the silences come in a single lifetime, in a single year... when species die, leaving a silent space in the world song that can never be filled.

Delint, Charles

38.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Abraham Lincoln

39.

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.

William Shakespeare

40.

The greatest admiration gives rise not to words, but to silence.

Musonnius

41.

Oppression can only survive through silence.

Carmen de Monteflores

42.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

Twain, Mark

43.

It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.

Seneca

44.

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Hardy, Thomas

45.

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.

Illich, Ivan

46.

I am better able to retract what I did not say than what I did.

Gabirol, Ibn

47.

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Thomas Hardy

48.

It ain't a bad plan to keep still occasionally even when you know what you're talking about.

Hubbard, Kin

49.

You are a slave to what you do say, a master of what you don't say.