Motivational Quotes

Silence

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

Best Quotes about Silence

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

Samuel Johnson

There are grammatical errors even in his silence.

Stanislaw J. Lec

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

Hubbard, Kin

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

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

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

William Penn

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.

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

Engel, Silvan

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

Beaumont, Francis

10.

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

Meister Eckhart

11.

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

12.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

Gaulle, Charles De

13.

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

Plutarch

14.

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

Smith, Sydney

15.

Not to ask is not be denied.

Dryden, John

16.

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

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

17.

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

18.

Illich, Ivan

19.

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

Mcginley, Phyllis

20.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

Marceau, Marcel

21.

Their silence is sufficient praise.

Terence

22.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Sir Francis Bacon

23.

Keep your mouth closed until your mind is in gear.

24.

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

Syrus, Publilius

25.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

26.

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

Crapsey, Adelaide

27.

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

Musonnius

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Abraham Lincoln

32.

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

Blaise Pascal

33.

Sometimes silence is not golden -- just yellow.

34.

Silence is the true friend that never betrays.

Confucius

35.

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

Mcginley, Phyllis

36.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

37.

Sometimes a whisper speaks volumes.

Sheddan, Scott

38.

'Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

Ovid

39.

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

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

40.

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

41.

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

Beckett, Samuel

42.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Josh Billings

43.

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Thomas Hardy

44.

The silent dog is the first to bite.

Proverb

45.

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

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.

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

O'Malley, Austin

48.

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

49.

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

Lynn Johnston

50.

Silence is argument carried on by other means.

Guevara, Che