Motivational Quotes

Silence

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

- Chopra, Deepak

Best Quotes about Silence

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

Meister Eckhart

The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them known only to those who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations.

Giles, Henry

'Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

Ovid

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

These be three silent things: The Falling snow... the hour before the dawn... the mouth of one just dead.

Crapsey, Adelaide

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

Syrus, Publilius

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

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

Engel, Silvan

10.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. 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. We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Mother Teresa

11.

Silence is more musical than any song.

Christina Rossetti

12.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say -- unless you insist on saying it.

15.

The rest is silence.

William Shakespeare

16.

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

Burns, Robert

17.

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.

Katz, Jonathan

18.

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself, and know that everything in this life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.

KuBler-Ross, Elisabeth

19.

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

20.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

21.

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

Abraham Lincoln

22.

Sometimes silence is not golden -- just yellow.

23.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Josh Billings

24.

Consider the whale: It never gets into trouble until it comes up and starts spouting.

25.

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

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

26.

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

Smith, Sydney

27.

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

Bagehot, Walter

28.

Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

29.

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

John Tillotson

30.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Publilius Syrus

31.

Oppression can only survive through silence.

Carmen de Monteflores

32.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

33.

There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.

Voltaire

34.

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

Lynn Johnston

35.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. [Proverbs 17:28]

Bible

36.

Keep your mouth closed until your mind is in gear.

37.

It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others.

John of the Cross, St.

38.

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Hardy, Thomas

39.

The silent dog is the first to bite.

Proverb

40.

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

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

41.

A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?

Richards, Edward Hersey

42.

I went down with the ship but I kept my mouth shut so I didn't drown like the rest of them.

43.

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

44.

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

Muhammad Ali

45.

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

Shakespeare, William

46.

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

47.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

Gaulle, Charles De

48.

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

Ausonius

49.

Silence is never more golden than when you hold it long enough to get all the facts before you speak.

50.

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