Motivational Quotes

Silence

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

- Bagehot, Walter

Best Quotes about Silence

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

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

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

Bible

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

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

Young, Brigham

Sometimes a whisper speaks volumes.

Sheddan, Scott

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

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

Abraham Lincoln

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

Thomas Hardy

X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.

Dickson, R A

10.

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

11.

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

Beaumont, Francis

12.

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

13.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

14.

Not to ask is not be denied.

Dryden, John

15.

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.

Huxley, Aldous

16.

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

Muhammad Ali

17.

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

18.

Silence is argument carried on by other means.

Guevara, Che

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Hubbard, Kin

23.

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

Musonnius

24.

Sometimes silence is not golden -- just yellow.

25.

Their silence is sufficient praise.

Terence

26.

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

27.

A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.

Dante Alighieri

28.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

29.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Josh Billings

30.

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

Plutarch

31.

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

Ausonius

32.

When thou art quiet and silent, then art thou as God was before nature and creature; thou art that which God then wats; thou art that whereof he made thy nature and creature: Then thou hearest and seest even with that wherewith God himself saw and heard in thee, before every thine own willing or thine own seeing began.

Boehme, Jacob

33.

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

34.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

35.

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

Crapsey, Adelaide

36.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Sir Francis Bacon

37.

Silence is more musical than any song.

Christina Rossetti

38.

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

Gibran, Kahlil

39.

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

Marceau, Marcel

40.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Publilius Syrus

41.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

Churchill, Winston

42.

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

43.

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

Voltaire

44.

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

William Penn

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

Silence is a text easy to misread.

A. A. Attanasio

48.

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

49.

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

O'Malley, Austin

50.

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