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

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Thomas Hardy

The whisper of a pretty girl can be heard further than the roar of a lion.

Proverb, Arabian

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

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

Marceau, Marcel

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

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

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

O'Malley, Austin

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

Lynn Johnston

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

10.

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

Burns, Robert

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Silence is a text easy to misread.

A. A. Attanasio

14.

Their silence is sufficient praise.

Terence

15.

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

Blaise Pascal

16.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

17.

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

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

18.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

19.

'Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

Ovid

20.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

21.

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

William Penn

22.

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

23.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Josh Billings

24.

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

Smith, Sydney

25.

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

William Shakespeare

26.

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

Mcginley, Phyllis

27.

There are grammatical errors even in his silence.

Stanislaw J. Lec

28.

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.

Gibran, Kahlil

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Silence is more musical than any song.

Christina Rossetti

33.

Silence is the true friend that never betrays.

Confucius

34.

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

Ausonius

35.

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

Xenocrates of Chalcedon

36.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

37.

Not to ask is not be denied.

Dryden, John

38.

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

39.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

Gaulle, Charles De

40.

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

Musonnius

41.

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

Bagehot, Walter

42.

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Hardy, Thomas

43.

Silence is argument carried on by other means.

Guevara, Che

44.

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

45.

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

Abraham Lincoln

46.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

47.

Illich, Ivan

48.

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

Samuel Johnson